The birthday problem What’s the probability that in a randomly selected group of 30 unrelated people, at least two have the same birthday? Let’s make two assumptions to simplify the problem.

First, we’ll ignore the possibility of a February 29 birthday. Second, we assume that a randomly chosen person is equally likely to be born on each of the remaining 365 days of the year.

(a) How would you use random digits to imitate one repetition of the process? What variable would you measure?

(b) Use technology to perform 5 repetitions. Record the outcome of each repetition.

(c) Would you be surprised to learn that the theoretical probability is 0.71? Why or why not?