Q: How many randomly-chosen people would need to be in the same room to virtually guarantee two of them share the same birthday? A: 75 (99.9% probability) This unintuitive answer is known as the birthday paradox. The earliest known publication of the birthday paradox was in 1939 by the mathematician Richard von Mises. However, there…
Archive | February, 2024
Ablaut Reduplication Isn’t Jibber Jabber
Ever wonder why we say clocks go tick tock and not tock tick?Or why the music genre is called hip hop and not hop hip? If you ask most English speakers for a reason, they’ll likely respond it just sounds better that way. That may be true, but it turns out there is an actual…