Chance News 80

Weirdness?

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudo-Science, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time
by Michael Shermer, MIF Books, 1997, p. 54

Shermer is founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and a Scientific American columnist. This book contains his list of “Twenty-five Fallacies That Lead Us to Believe Weird Things.” The fallacies are not new, but are well illustrated by many interesting historic and contemporary stories.

See Shermer's 13-minute TED Talk[1], including a demonstration of a $900 “dowser” designed to find marijuana in kids’ lockers. Shermer states:

Science is not a thing, it’s a verb. It’s a way of thinking about things. It’s a way of looking for natural explanations for all phenomena.

===Question===
Shermer states:

[M]ost people have a very poor understanding of the laws of probability. …. The probability that two people in a room of thirty people will have the same birthday is .71.

Ignoring issues such as leap years or twins, and assuming a uniform distribution of real-life birthdays, do you agree with the probability as stated – or could you modify the statement to make it more accurate?

Submitted by Margaret Cibes