US Presidents

[Nigel Browne]

How weird...
Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost a child while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.
Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.
Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.
Lincoln was shot at the theatre named 'Kennedy'.
Kennedy was shot in a car called 'Lincoln.'
Booth ran from the theatre and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theatre.
Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.
And here's the kicker.
A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in Monroe, Marilyn.

[Greg Harris]

another wierd piece of triva about US Presidents...
all presidents that have been elected or taken office in a "0" year ( 1960, 1980, 2000... ) have either died in office or been assasinated ( except for Regan, but he was a couple blocks from the hospital when he was shot... )
maybe Al Gore should have won last year
[This message has been edited by Greg Harris (edited May 22, 2001).]

[Thomas Paul]

Actually, not all presidents. Jefferson was elected in 1800 and did not die in office. The dead guys are:
William Henry Harrison - elected in 1840 - died from pneumonia contracted after giving a really long speech in the pouring rain on his inauguration day.
Abraham Lincoln - elected in 1860 - first assassinated president
James Garfield - elected in 1880 - Shot in the back. He actually died several months later because of an infection caused by his doctors who poked and prodded him to try to find the bullet and get it out.
William McKinley - elected in 1900 - assassinated.
Warren Harding - elected in 1920 - heart attack.
Franklin Roosevelt - elected in 1940 - heart attack.
John Kennedy - elected in 1960 - assassinated.
So during a span of 120 years, 7 US presidents elected in zero years died in office or about 27% of all the presidents serving between 1840 and 1960. However, since they didn't all die in their first terms, that represents about 39% of all elections during that period. (FDR skews that one.) So the odds aren't nearly as unbelievable as it might first appear.
People aren't very good at calculating odds in their heads. Try this: how many people do you need to put in the same room before you have a 50-50 chance that any two people in the room have the same birthday?
[I screwed up the above... Taylor was not elected in a zero year and Harrison actually died in 1840. I have corrected the post.]

[This message has been edited by Thomas Paul (edited May 22, 2001).]

[Joseph Russell]

Two. But just putting one in is more fun.

[Maky]

21 i beleive..

[Greg Harris]

okay, so i forgot to include the Jefferson footnote... but it is still a strange coincidence.
i do not want to venture a guess about the birthday thing for fear of looking like an idiot. but, the obvious choice is 2. however, there are 365 days in a year, so actually that only gives a 1 / 182.5 percent chance that they have the same birthday, right? so, along that line it would have to be 182.5 people to have a 50/50 chance that 2 have the same birthday...
but, that does not work, either. with that many people, there is a chance that 3 or more people would have the same birthday. so, i am back to the obvious 2 people because that is the simple answer.
btw, i am taking statistics next semeseter, so i will get back to you then.

[Art Metzer]

Actually, you need 23 people in a room for a 50% chance of two having the same birthday.
If two of those people are twins, the odds rise dramatically.
And this whole Presidential thing: Didn't scientists exhume ol' Zack Taylor's body about ten years ago, and determine that there were no poisons found in his system? (Granted, he's no less dead, but I am a stickler.)
Still, no unwashed cherries for me, thanks just the same.
Art

[Thomas Paul]

It seems counterintuitive to many that only 23 people are needed in a group to have a 50-50 chance of at least one coincidental birthday.
To see why it takes just 23 people to reach even odds on sharing a birthday, you have to look at the probabilities. Assume that all 365 days have an equal chance of being a birthday. For a party of one, there is no possibility of a coincidence. So, the probability of that particular date being a unique birthday is 365/365. For a second person to have a birthday that doesn't match that of the first, he or she must be born on any one of the other 364 days of the year.
You obtain the probability of no match between the birthdays of two people by multiplying 365/365 times 364/365, which equals .9973. Hence, the probability of a match is 1 - .9973, or .0027, which is much less than 1 percent.
With two people, there are 363 unused birthdays. The probability that a third person has a birthday that differs from the other two distinct birthdays is 363/365. So, for three people, the chance of having no pair of matching birthdays is 365/365 x 364/365 x 363/365, or .9918.
As the number of people brought into the group increases, the chance of there being no match decreases. By the time the crowd numbers 23 people, the probability of no matching birthdays is .4927. Thus, the chance of at least one match within a group of 23 people is .5073, or slightly better than 50 percent.
The reason the number is as low as 23 is that you aren't looking for a specific match. It doesn't have to be two particular people or a given date. Any match involving any date or any two people is enough to create a coincidence. Indeed, there are 253 different pairings possible among 23 people, any of which could lead to a match.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Art Metzer:
And this whole Presidential thing: Didn't scientists exhume ol' Zack Taylor's body about ten years ago, and determine that there were no poisons found in his system? (Granted, he's no less dead, but I am a stickler.)

Right, he wasn't poisoned by arsenic or anything like that. But he could have died from food poisoning which would not show up in the body 150 years after the fact.

[Art Metzer]

Oh, that's right. I remember now, some historians' controversy.
Dead presidents, indeed.
Art

[Dan Tillotson]

Originally posted by Nigel Browne:
And here's the kicker.
A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in Monroe, Marilyn.

No mean feat either, if the last two lines are true: Kennedy was shot on 22 November, 1963; Marilyn Monroe died on 5 August 1962, approx. fifteen months earlier. I had no idea that Kennedy was a necrophiliac...

[Greg Harris]

yea, i think Kennedy was overheard once saying: "the one in the grave is the one that i crave..." i really don't know what that means, though.

[Annie Weaver]

but I heard at least ten presidents really died from eating too much meat.

[Paul Ralph]

Which ones? (he thought skeptically)
Paul R