This post is the first of our new series covering Science on Tap. This monthly event, a part of Sunset Zoo’s Behind the Science initiative, is a gathering at the Tallgrass Taphouse during which a featured scientist shares their research and engages with the audience in a lively conversation about the topic. Hopefully you are able to grab a beer and join in on the conversation; if not, we’ll be here to provide a summary of the research that was shared!

Have you ever been in a room full of people and wondered whether another person in the room has the same birthday as you? The chances that one other person will share your birthday in a situation such as this is a question of probability, termed the birthday paradox. This statistics problem has been studied in detail, and the results are quite surprising. In a room containing 65 people, there are a total of 2,080 number of unique birthday pairs; quite a big number of interactions! And though it seems like 65 is not that many people, there is a 99.7% chance that two people share the same birthday in a group this big. The problem is finding a significant pair, two people with the same birthday, in a pool of insignificant ones. Continue reading “Science on Tap: Using micro- and nanotechnologies to unlock the invisible world of microbes” →