Monday, May 15, 2023

What are the odds?

Since this week's parsha deals at length with first-borns, I thought I'd share a rather interesting family fact:

I have an aunt and uncle who have six children (בלי עין הרע) and every single one of those children made a פדיון הבן!

I once tried to calculate the odds of that happening. To calculate the odds of anyone making a פדיון הבן there are a number of factors that must be calculated. We can try to approximate:
  1. Let's assume that the child themselves is a ישראל, otherwise it's a non-starter. So we need to know the odds of their spouse not being a Levite (80% based on my snooping of our shul's membership database.)
  2. The first fetus has to be male (let's just say 50%)
  3. The baby must be delivered and not miscarried (let's use 90%)
  4. The baby must be born without a Cesarean (again, 90%)
So the odds of any non-Levite making a פדיון הבן are only about 32%. The odds of going 6-for-6 are a mere 0.12%
WOW!

2 comments:

  1. Apparently the odds of a baby norn without a Cesarean are higher today if the child is born in America, lower if born in Israel. Of the six firstborns meant above (my son is one of them), 3 of them were born in America and 3 in Israel

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  2. https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/22549/pidyon-haben-rate

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