Explorations » pedantry http://explorations.chasrmartin.com Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. Sun, 13 Feb 2011 04:41:43 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 About 1 in 2,134,521 http://explorations.chasrmartin.com/2008/03/02/about-1-in-2134521/ http://explorations.chasrmartin.com/2008/03/02/about-1-in-2134521/#comments Sun, 02 Mar 2008 22:17:40 +0000 Charlie http://explorations.chasrmartin.com/2008/03/02/about-1-in-2134521/

It was a double-layered leap year for a Needham family who welcomed a 6-pound, 6-ounce baby girl into the world yesterday on the mother’s quadrennial birthday.

“I’d really like to know the odds of this happening,” said a beaming Christine Cullen, who gave birth to her as-yet-unnamed daughter at 4 p.m. at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. — Boston Herald, 1 March 2008


About 1 in 2,134,521. (There are 365*4+1=1461 days in four years, so around 1 in 1461 births happen on 29 Feb. The chance that someone born on 29 Feb has a 29 Feb child is then 1 in 1461*1461, thus 1 in 2,134,521). Or, if you’d rather, about 0.00000047.

]]> http://explorations.chasrmartin.com/2008/03/02/about-1-in-2134521/feed/ 0