Icebreaker Collection Icebreakers, Brain Teasers and Exercises to Energize Your Sessions

Coincidence? The idea of this exercise is to help people become aware that some events are not as coincidental as they may at first seem. Tell the participants that you will be asking them to find the person in the room whose birthday is nearest to their own, but before they do that, ask them to write down what they think the chances are of someone finding a person who celebrates their birthday on the same day of the year as they do. When the mingling stops, ask what they originally thought the chances were of two people having the same birthday were. Capture the responses on a flip chart. Also ask whether anybody now wants to change their mind. The statistical chances of two people sharing the same birthday depend on the number of people in the group. If the group has 24 people, there is a better that 50 per cent chance. The chances increase to 70 per cent in a group of 30 people. Our Gold Membership area and our Icebreaker CD-ROM also give the probabilities for groups of 4–30 people. Also see What a Coincidence!

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