Friday Puzzler - Presidential Deaths
Alex Y
A friend of mine from the Ukraine is a mathematics professor whose area of study is probability. He knows nothing about US history. I told him that our founding event was the Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate on July 4. I also told him that it was interesting that three of our first 5 presidents had died on July 4, and asked him what the probability of that was. He said that the mathematics to answer that was trivial, but he was not a savant, so he couldn't give me a numerical answer off the top of his head. However, he said he would give me 10 to one odds that if I told him the names of the first through the fifth president, he could name one of the three who died on the fourth of July.
How could he be so confident that he could name one of the three?
Credit to Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, on Car Talk.