DOPPLEGANGER

I was terribly relieved to find my doppleganger to be a pretty cool guy.

Last week, one of my close friends sent me a number of emails wishing me a happy Thanksgiving and a happy birthday which I did not receive. She also sent out an email inviting me and a number of our close friends to a celebratory birthday dinner, which I also did not receive. An unsuspecting stranger who shares my last name, on the other hand, got what he would later describe as being "a number of odd, yet eerily familiar emails." In addition to our surname, J and I have roughly the same birthday and live exceedingly close to one another.

Needless to say, I was surprised by the coincidence. Coming from the highly-refined pedigree that he does, J decided to be a good sport and join us for dinner last night. He also brought me 6 Bohemian-style beers which, in my opinion, is as close to a coat of arms as you can get for my family.

Then again, as I'm sure you're all aware, if you're in a room with 23 people (or more) there is a >50% chance that two will share the same birthday. Convince yourself of this fact by using the following formula: 365!/(365^n [365-n]!) where 'n' is equal to the number of times in a day you've slammed your face into your desk and begged god to burn your cold-ass office to ashes and finally put an end to the torturous monotony your job.

footnote: The diagram above describes both the probability that any given two people share the same birthday (represented by the function p(n) where n is group size), and the probability that a person in a group of size n will have the same birthday as one chosen in advance (function q(n)). The function p(n) is a close approximation to a Poisson distribution or a Taylor Series expansion of a simple exponential function. In contrast, the function q(n) is much simpler, and can be represented as: 1-([365-1]/365)^n. (Slam, slam, slam!)