Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Three Grandmothers with the Same Birthday

It's easy to say that something is against the odds, but how do you determine the odds?

I've read about statistics that once you get something like 50 people together in one place, it's almost guaranteed that two of them will have the same birthday.  (I've read it, but I still don't understand it.)  But what about when you're dealing with only two or three people?  The odds have to be much lower, right?

Yet low odds are not impossible odds.

For our example here, we have my half-sister, Laurie.

We have the same father, so we share a paternal grandmother.  Anna Gauntt was born January 14, 1893.

Laurie's maternal grandmother, Louise Elsie Gaynor, was born January 14, 1903.

Okay, all you statisticians out there, can we figure out the odds of that happening?

But I'll go one step further.

Our paternal grandfather married twice after living with our grandmother.  His third wife, to whom he was married before I was born, and who can reasonably be called our stepgrandmother (my mother certainly always told me to call her Grandma), was Adelle Cordelia Taylor.  And she was born January 14, 1914.

What are the odds on that particular situation?  I certainly don't know.  Maybe our brother or sister-in-law can figure it out.  They're the mathematicians in the family.  Which I realize is not the same as a statistician, but it's the closest we have.

So today, on January 14, I'll wish a happy birthday in heaven to three of my sister's grandmothers.

This is the type of thing I noticed while going through a year's worth of births, marriages, and deaths in my family.

Family historians are a strange breed.

10 comments:

  1. Certainly seems more than a coincidence! Very cool.

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  2. That is fun! Indeed, the things we notice!

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    1. It's helpful for a genealogist to be anal retentive, right?

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  3. What a fun coincidence! It definitely makes family history that much more fun. :)

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  4. Wow, that is so cool! We have multiple anniversaries on the same day, but that is something one can choose. I have never met anyone with my exact birthday -- lo and behold, my daughter's beau's mother was born on my birthday.

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  5. That’s pretty amazing! I hope a statistician takes you up on the challenge :-)

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    1. That's one of the advantages of a blog. This post will stay up, and a statistician may just run across it one day when Googling the word "statistician."

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