Happy 10th birthday to Charles Fudgemuffin!

Incredibly, this week it's the 10th anniversary of the Charles Fudgemuffin blog! I've had some significant milestones along the way (such as reaching half a million page views a couple of years ago), but when I started the blog I never imagined I'd still be waffling on each week after ten years!

Anyway, in recognition of my 'birthday', this week's blog post features a birthday themed multiple choice statistical dilemma...

Happy Birthday!
...but to how many people?

Birthday conundrum

If two people are in the same room, there is a 1 in 365 chance of them sharing the same birthday, or a 0.27% chance.

If 366 people are in the same room, there is a 100% chance that at least two of them will share the same birthday.¹

So the question is, how many people would need to be in the room for there to be a 50% chance or greater that at least two people will share a birthday?

A) 23 people
B) 46 people
C) 92 people
D) 183 people

How many days before vampires take over the world?

A vampire conundrum.

My latest book, Fly-Tipping, was published this week, so to promote it, this week's blog post is inspired by a question posed by one of the minor characters from the book:

"If a vampire drank the blood of one human per night, and every human he drank the blood of turned into a vampire who then subsequently also drank the blood of one human per night, how many days would it be before every person in the world was a vampire?”

Before I answer the question, here's a poll to see how many people get it right. Obviously I can't list every possible answer*, so instead I've grouped the answers into various ranges to make things a little easier.

* Well I suppose I could, but it would be a very long poll!

Surprising statistics (part 2)

I've featured surprising statistics before on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog, so it should come as no surprise that this week I round-up another batch of surprising statistics!*

* For clarification, the statistics themselves may be surprising, but my inclusion of those statistics in this week's blog post shouldn't come as a surprise.

"Have you farted?"
"No, it's just the obnoxious spray from my scent glands."

To start things off, here's a surprising statistic about farts!

1) Parp!

Every second, over a million people in the world fart!

The average person farts 14 times per day, and there are approximately 7.7 billion people in the world.*

* At the time of writing.

There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so if we assume that a typical fart lasts for 1 second or less, than an average person will fart during 14 of these 86,400 seconds.

So the number of people who fart each second is:

14 farts / 86,400 seconds x 7,700,000,000 people = 1,247,685 farts every second!

Surprising financial statistics

This week's blog post has a financial theme to it, but rather than just list random financial facts and statistics, I've instead made it into a two part quiz...

Money, pictured yesterday.

1) Interested in interest

If you put 10 pence in a bank account and got 5% interest every year on the balance in your account, how much would you have after 500 years?

A) £2.55
B) £5.10
C) £84.62
D) £3,932,326,182.72

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