The birthday paradox is an interesting mathematical phenomenon: How large of a group of people would it take for the chances of two of them sharing the same birthday to exceed 50%?
What does your gut tell you? 50? 100? 366? 730? The correct answer is 23—which also happens to explain how, in my high school class of 30, we could have not just one but two pairs of folks born on the same day.
The reason for this surprisingly low number is that you’re not just comparing each person to one other person. You’re comparing them to everyone else. So with 23 people, you already have 253 pairs of people to consider, and that tips your chances of a match to just over 50%.
Life is the same, I think. We usually see only one way an event can work out, one path to get to where we want. But actually, there’s an infinite number of combinations! You might not be accepted into your dream college when applying via the official route, but maybe you end up impressing a professor in another setting. Maybe a friend of a friend pulls out of a scholarship and recommends you in their place. Maybe you’ll get an honorary degree 30 years in the future.
In The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo famously instructs C-3PO to “never tell him the odds.” That’s solid advice when you know the deck is stacked against you. But what if, most of the time, the odds are better than we think? You might feel you’re only 5% of the way, but perhaps you’ve already passed the halfway mark to your greatest success.
Continue enlisting chance as an ally, and don’t be surprised when more people share your birthday than you expected.
