I don't think this problem even involves factorials.

In A1 put the number 1. In A2, =A1*(366-ROW())/365

Copy down as many rows as there are people in the room.

A3 = 0.9918, A5 = 0.9729, A25 = 0.4313

You hit 50% at about 23 people.


On 24 Jul 2003 15:46:19 -0700, (Charles Douglas Wehner) wrote:

"Les Coover" wrote in message
t...
Thank you everyone for your posts. I apologize if I mislead anyone into
thinking the problem was more complicated than it actually is.

The problem: Design a program that will calculate the probability no 2
people have the same birthday when the number of randomly selected
people is 3, 5 and 25.


NOW HE TELLS US!!!!!!!!

I wrote an all-singing all-dancing MACHINE-CODE program to work out
ZILLIONS and VERMILLIONS and POSTILLIONS of combinations - and he
wants to go up to 25.

Anyway, look elsewhere in this string - or at
http://wehner.org/tools/factor.txt

The object code is at
http://wehner.org/tools/factor.x
It must be renamed "factor.com" (IBM DOS only)

Charles Douglas Wehner