l live in a very small rural village - [yes we do have an idiot] but there are 4 ladies with MS.
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I grew up on a cul de sac of only twelve houses. Two of us who were children there then have MS. The other person was one of three girls in the same form at secondary school to have MS.
It always seemed disproportionate to me.
I know lots of people with MS now, but that’s through yoga and exercise classes, MS Soc branch etc
I grew up in a family of four.
My mum had MS and now i have it too. That’s a whopping 50% of the population!!!
Someone should call the Daily Mail… its an epidemic!
There’s probably similarities to the ‘birthday paradox’, which is to do with the probability of people in a group having the same birthday. You only need a surprisingly small number of people to have very high chances of some of them sharing a birthday. So if you take 23 people for example, there’s a 50% chance of two of them having a shared birthday. And in a group of 70 people, it’s almost a certainty that two people share a birthday - 90.5%.probable.
Dan
That is so true, LinkedIn is great for this since there famous people on the site and it also tells you how many degrees of separation there are between you and that person. I was really shocked to find out last year that Barack Obama was only a second degree connection to me on the site, that immediately made me start searching my contacts only to find out that I knew that was also connected to the president of the United States of America.
hi dan
how does that work? i would assume the chances of any two people sharing the same birthday is 0.003% (or 1/356)? not being facetious, but genuinely interested.
cheers fluffyollie
I know I’m not Dan, but you’re not talking about any particular two people, or any particular birthday. If I am randomly paired with another person, the chances of us having the same birthday are one in 365 (I assume that’s what you meant to type). I wasn’t born on a “leap day”, which would lengthen the odds considerably!
But here, we are not looking at two individuals, A&B. We are looking at any person in a room having the same birthday as any other person in the room - we don’t care which two.
So say I’m at a party with 22 other people: my chance of matching ANY of the others rises to 22 x 1/365, or 22/365.
But if I don’t match anybody, the next person still has 21 possible matches, or 21/365 (anybody excluding me)
If they don’t match anyone either, the next person still has 20 possible matches, or 20/365.
We can keep going all the way down until there are only two people left, and they now do have a 1/365 chance of matching each other.
But if we add ALL the probabilities of anyone matching anyone, from the highest (22 in 365) to the lowest (1 in 365), we come out with an amazing 253/365 - or more than 50%. Remember, this is of any two sharing any day - not sharing a particular day.
Each individual at the party still only has a 22 in 365 chance of finding a match, but for the party overall, the chances of finding a match between any two people is better than half - as long as you don’t mind who.
Tina
x
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So far, in my adult life (mid 40s), I have become good friends with 5 people who share my birthday. I have 4 very good friends, 2 share one birthday and 2 share another.
never been massively into astrology but maybe people born on certain dates do share traits which attract unto friendship. To my knowledge none of the above have ms other than me, so doesn’t follow your conversation at all…
at primary school i had a good friend who shared my birthday (hallowe’en) and then a new family moved in next door and there daughter had the same birthday.
it’s nice because every year on my birthday i think of maggie and chris and wonder where they are now.
maybe we’ll pass each other on our broomsticks!
carole x
in the words of a monty python gumby man…
‘my brain hurts’
I know more women than men have m.s. (2 to 1??) but whilst a lot of people know of someone with m.s. it’s usually a woman they know not a man. Not sure of the reason for this.
Surely because twice as many women have it
Jan x
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0.1% 0f the population will be about 67/68,000,but even the lowest guestimates are 80,000.I was talking at a volunteer member of our club who was with an independent MS help line and he said there are 135,000 diagnosed of us.WHEN I win the Lottery the first job will be to get a law firm to use the freedom of information act on every PCT in the UK to find out exactly how many diagnosed club members there are.How can the number be estimated in this computer driven digital age.
When I’m talking at somebody daft enough to ask what is the matter with me I always say multiple sclerosis a couple of times to avoid any confusion.The ratio of girls to boys is said to be 4/5 to one and a really lucky 25% of us have pain.I’m very lucky and it dominates and ruins my life
Wb