Coincidence

I have met two people who were born in the same hospital on the same day as me. Whaddya think of that ?

Exactly what your title says.

Besides, it’s not all that unlikely. Consider that people born in the same hospital have good odds of growing up in the same area, and being the same age are likely to go to school together.

How’s this for coincidence: If you gather any 23 random people in the world, the probability that two of them will share a birthday is 50%.

You only need to meet something like 500 other people to have the odds greater than 50% that you will find two people who share your birthday (assuming an even spread of birthdays through the year, which is actually incorrect since baby-bearing is seasonal.) If you are in a small town with only one hospital, where pretty much everyone was born in this hospital, you’ll eventually meet two people with your birthday.

Here’s an even bigger coincidence. The odds that you have your birthday, out of all the millions of birthdays in history, are actually 100%. Isn’t that amazing?

I think I will move this thread from General Questions to Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share.

Gfactor
General Questions Moderator

What a coincidence! I was just thinking you should do that.

My son goes to school with two kids who were in the nursery at the hospital with him. A girl who was born on 10/15, my son 10/16, and a boy who was born on 10/17. He only has 20 kids in his class too.

He was also born on the same day as my husbands bowling teammate’s kid. In fact I had my son just after midnight and was moved to another room, then that guys wife took my room and had her son 12 hours later. We are also both named Cathy. :slight_smile:

So were the rest of us, but it just seemed too obvious to say out loud. :stuck_out_tongue:

Sure, but somebody had to say it. If everybody thinks about saying it but nobody says it then everybody thinks that everybody else is thinking it but nobody knows for sure since nobody said it because if somebody said it but nobody else thought it they’d feel stupid for saying it and wish they hadn’t thought of it.

Best place for that to happen is at the drivers license exam bureau on the 16th birthday.
Or those from the pre 72 area, there was a gathering at the armed forces induction station.

When I was eleven, I met a girl from a nearby town who was born on the same day that I was. When we were twelve, her cousin married my sister. They hadn’t known each other when we met.

About five years ago I was in the drugstore waiting in line when the man ahead of me was asked his birthdate. When he said it, I couldn’t believe my ears. I was born on the same day. Do I told him that he was born on a Wednesday and that if he was from around here, he was born during a heat wave when the temps were still over 90 degrees at 8:00 PM in parts of the state. (This was my best savant impression apparently.) He just stared at me. I finally told him how I knew.

Geez Louise, that guy was old!

Returning to savant perspective: Everything that happens is coincidental.

That’s amazing! I was born on a Wednesday too!

Let’s not be too smug about the OP though. Just because coincidences aren’t supernatural doesn’t mean they’re not cool. I always get a little tingle when I’m faced with something that points up my and the rest of humanity’s hopelessly bad statistical intuition.

Again, we were already thinking that. It just seemed soooooooooooooo obvious none of us wanted to be the one to say it and look dumb.

God bless you for taking that hit for us.

I was also born on a day of the week! And during the regular calender year, no less!

You think that’s weird? My brother’s cousin’s father’s nephew has the same name as I do, and looks just like me.

Not only that, he’s fucking your wife!

I’m in possession of a five-dollar bill(US) on which the serial number is the same as the first eight digits of my social security number.

I don’t live in Mayberry. It’s a fairly large town about 15 miles from NYC. Neither of these guys ever lived there. One of them worked in my office, and I met the other about 3 years ago while out of town. We were all born in 1948.

Years ago, I lived in a two-flat (sort of like a duplex, looked like a house, but there was a downstairs apartment and an upstairs apartment). The guys upstairs had a big party.

A couple of people heading to their party got the address right but came into my apartment instead. I had gone to college with one of them–five years before, in another state.

My roommate had gone to college with the other one. Again, five years before and in yet another state.

All roads lead to Boulder!