I've the following problem.
In a class, there are $x$ female and $y$ male students. Their birthdays are uniformly distributed over $N = 365$.
- What's the probability that there are at least two different female students with same birthday ?
- What's the probability that there is at least one female-male pair of students who share the same birthday given that no female students share a birthday ?
- What's the probability that at least one female student shares same birthday with another student ?
My attempt
$Pr(\text{At least 2 fem. share a bday}) = 1 - Pr(\text{No fem. share a bday})$ where $$ Pr(\text{No fem. share a bday}) = \frac{N\times(N-1)\times \dots (N-x+1)}{N^x} $$
$Pr(\text{At least one pair has the same bday}) = 1 - Pr(\text{no pair has the same bday})$ where
$$ Pr(\text{no pair has the same bday}) = \prod_{i = 1}^y\prod_{j = 1}^xPr(\text{Male i do not share a bday with fem. j}) $$ and
$$ \prod_{i = 1}^y\prod_{j = 1}^xPr(\text{Male i do not share a bday with fem. j}) = (\frac{N-1}{N})^{xy}$$ Of course I use the fact that there are $x$ distinct female birthdays under the given condition.
- $Pr(\text{A female shares a bday with another student}) = Pr(\text{At least 2 fem. share a bday}) + Pr(\text{A female shares a bday with a male|No 2 fem. share a bday)} = Answer1 + Answer 2 $
I've basically 2 questions regarding this:
- Is it correct ?
- How can I simplify it ? I feel much more comfortable when I think in terms of negation but I feel there's a simpler approach to this problem.
is straightforward textbook stuff
it is given that no two females have the same birthday. So the females leave $(365-x)$ birthdays open. The chance that no male birthday 'hits' this set is $1-({\frac{365-x}{365}})^y$
1 - probability that no two females share the same birthday times the probability that all males have birthdays in the set of birthdays that are left open.