Re:RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested
by layer8 on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @05:57PM
(#31008731)
The OP however isn’t surprised by the actual odds of any two people randomly running into each other, but by the fact that it happened to them or acquaintances. They actually don’t know what the odds would be for the whole airport or plane. With the birthday paradox, on the other hand, the thing that people are surprised about is not how often it happens to them, but the actual odds for a given group size of people.
Re:RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested
by projektfu on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @06:18AM
(#31012959)
Yes, but if it happened to someone else, that person might be on here expressing surprise and OP would be amusedly reading it.
I was in two classes where the birthday paradox was discussed, at different universities. Both times it was my birthday that was shared with someone else. What are the odds?
> how often people who know each other randomly run into each other in an airport.
> I mean, what are the odds?
This is explicitly stating "any two people" (and it's at an airport not a plane, so more people). But then follows up with changing the framing of question they're asking:
> I only had it happen once, but it was nuts.
The birthday paradox is only a paradox because we tend to think of birthdays in a very personal manner. So when we think of "any two people sharing a birthday" we immediately change this to "someone having my birthday", without realizing we've fundamentally changes the question we're asking.