The Birthday Paradox

November 11, 2021

How many people have to be in a room before the probability that there is a shared birthday is greater than 50%?

This is called the Birthday Problem, and the solution is known as the birthday paradox. It is interesting because the answer is counterintuitive and the ramifications affect the security of cryptographic hash algorithms.

The explanation is a bit long for a blog post, so I wrote a full article:

The Birthday Paradox