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Probability mistake can

give a good approximation
Posted on 25 June 2009 by John

If you run into someone on the street, the probability that the other person shares
your birthday is 1/365. If you run into five people, the probability that at least one of
them shares your birthday is 5/365, right?

The answer 5/365 is quite accurate, but not exactly correct. It’s good enough for this
problem since there are other practical difficulties besides the quality of the
approximation. For example, the problem implicitly assumes there are 365 days in
a year, i.e. that no one is ever born on Leap Day.

Now think about a similar problem. Suppose the chance of rain is 40% each day for
the next three days. Does that mean there is a 120% chance that it will rain at least
one of the next three days? That can’t be. In fact, the chance of some rain over the
next three days is 78.4% (assuming the probabilities are independent, which
they’re probably not).

The following rule appears to be correct for birthdays but not for predicting rain.

If the probability of a success in one attempt is p, then the probability of at least

one success in n attempts is np.
Why does this rule hold sometimes and not at other times? If the probability of
success on each attempt is p, the probability of failure on each attempt is (1-p). The
probability of n failures in a row is (1-p)n and so the probability of at least one
success is 1 – (1-p)n. That’s the right way to approach the birthday example and the
rain example. In the birthday example, p = 1/365 and so the probability of running
into at least one person in five who shares your birthday is 1 – (364/365)5 = 0.013624.
And 5/365 = 0.013699 is a very good approximation. In the rain example, p = 0.4 and
the probability of at least one day of rain out of the next three is 1 – 0.63 = 0.784. The
difference between the birthday example and the rain example is the size of p. The
following equation, based on the binomial theorem, explains why.

When we use np as our approximation, we’re ignoring the terms involving p2 and
higher powers of p. When p is small, higher powers of p are very small and can be
ignored. That’s why the approximation worked well for p = 1/365. But when p is
large, say p = 0.4, the error is large; the terms involving higher powers of p are
important in that case. Notice also that the size of n matters. The birthday example
breaks down when n is large. If you run into 400 people, it is likely that one of them
will share your birthday, but far from certain. The probability in that case is about
2/3, not 400/365.

When p and n are both small, the probability of at least one success out of n tries is
approximately np. We can say more. Because the first term the approximation
drops from the equation above has a negative sign, our approximation is also an
upper bound. This says np slightly over-estimates the probability.

Now how small do p and n have to be? If you calculate the approximation np and
get a small answer, then it’s a good answer. Why? The error in the np
approximation is roughly n(n-1)p2/2, which is less than (np)2. And if np is small, (np)2
is very small.

See Sales tax included for a similar discussion. That also post looks at a common
mistake and explains why it makes a good approximation under some
circumstances and not under others.

Categories : Math

Tags : Probability and Statistics

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4 thoughts on “Probability
mistake can give a good
approximation”

Danny Tarlow
25 June 2009 at 16:27
I guess it’s somewhat off-topic, but the thing that always bothers
me about using the probability of rain in a given day as an example
is the implicit assumption that rain on each day is an independent
event. In reality most times, it’s more like there’s a 40% chance a
storm will take a certain path through the region, and if the storm
does take this path, there’s a near certain chance that it will rain for
three days straight.

John
25 June 2009 at 16:33
Good point. Assuming independence in weather reports is
unrealistic. Birthdays, sure: independence seems justified, unless
you run into twins walking together. :-)

teknas
25 June 2009 at 17:01
The birthday paradox is a more interesting variant of the problem
you introduce. Here you end up picking a pair of people in a room
at random and calculate the probability of finding at least a pair of
them who share their birthday. Turns out with 23 people you have
0.5 probability of a pair of them sharing their birthday. Not very
intuitive but the math is simple and very insightful.

tt
11 November 2019 at 23:15
thank you! this was very concise and well explained. super helpful
for my statistics class.
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