What are the odds of being born and dying on leap day?

Question

In "Leap Day" by Wendy Mass, Josie says the odds of being born and dying on leap day is practically astronomical. Because of this, she knows she can rest easy and not worry about dying on February 29th. Is it astronomical or are the odds just really really low of both being born AND dying on leap day?

Answer 1

Your chances of being born on a leap day are 1 in every 4 years, or 1/1461.  Your chances of dying on a leap day, all other things being equal, are the same.  So your chances of both being born and dying on a leap day are 1/1461*1/1461 or 1/2,134,521.  True, not great odds.  But certainly not discountable.

Answer 2

Eri's answer is correct.

Given that there are about seven billion people on the planet, it follows that, by the law of averages, 3,279 of then will be born and die on leap day.

Answer 3

Previous events have no effect on the odds of future events.

The odds of someone, in the future, playing two lottery games with 1-in-1,000 odds, and winning both, is 1-in-1,000,000.  However, once the person wins the first lottery, the odds of then winning both is 1-in-1,000, just like anyone else.

If you flip a  coin and it comes up "heads" 100 times in a row, it's still 50-50 that the next flip will be "tails", despite the emotional response of "it's due".  (This ignores the possibility that the coin isn't balanced, and is weighted to come up heads most of the time.)

Just because someone is born on February 29 doesn't make the odds that they will die on February 29 any different than anyone else, regardless of their birthday.

- kb -

Answer 4

Well technically a person borne on a leap day could commit suicide at any other such day...

The chances are great that way (for those who are borne on this day)

Answer 5

From the question, it sounds as if Josie has already been born on leap day. That being the case, she would be wrong in claiming that the chances of her being-born-and-dying on leap day are 1 in 2 million. The chances of her being born and dying on leap day, given that she has already been born on leap day, would be 1 in 1461.

Answer 6

Actually, some research will be needed to answer this question, since all the posts here are incorrect. In the USA, for example, births are not uniformly spread across all days. October 5 is the most common birth date, and May 22 is the least common.

Hence, a weighted average will be needed to give you the probability.

HTH

Charles