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Shared Birth Date Phenomenon of Death Note Kira Actors - Mathematician Richard Mak Explains How Such a Thing is not Only Possible, but Inevitable

23/2/2016

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Six of the twenty-two actors who have played Light Yagami share their birthday with another in their rarefied group.  Had the Death Note anime's German dub Kira Kim Hasper been born a day later, he would have made it a triple whammy for one date.

To the untutored mind it seems like magic, or the greatest, weirdest coincidence imaginable.  But it isn't magic, it's mathematics according to Richard Mak, and he's a bit like Near when it comes to the old calculations.

Death Note Light Yagami Actors' Shared Birthday Phenomenon

Take a look at this list of birthdays for Death Note actors in the role of Kira across various adaptations.  Something remarkable soon comes to light:
  1. Unknown - Louie Paraboles - Philippines
  2. Unknown 1977 - José Leonardo - Brazil
  3. March 2nd 1977 - Leung Wai Tak - China
  4. March 20th 1975 - Manuel Campuzano - Mexico
  5. April 6th 1982 - Kwang-Ho Hong - Korea
  6. April 25th - - Andy Kelso, USA
  7. May 2nd 1964 - Sergio Zamora - Spain
  8. May 15th 1977 - Krisztián Kolovratnik - Hungary
  9. May 15th 1982 - Tatsuya Fujiwara - Japan
  10. February 21st 1990 - Flavio Aquilone - Italy
  11. June 8th 1983 - Mamoru Miyano - Japan
  12. July 13th 1979 - Alexis Tomassian - France
  13. August 5th 1975 - Kim Hasper - Germany
  14. August 6th 1981 - Kenji Urai - Japan
  15. August 6th 1988 - Masataka Kubota - Japan
  16. August 13th 1974 - Vadim V Prokhorov - Russia
  17. October 12th 1987 - Hayato Kakizawa - Japan
  18. November 30th 1965 - Li Tang Jing - Taiwan
  19. December 7th 1970 - Radoslav Poplonkowski - Poland
  20. December 17th 1968 - Yeong-Seon Kim - Korea
  21. December 17th 1994 - Nat Wolff - USA
  22. December 26th 1976 - Brad Swaile - Canada
To see where and how each played Light, consult:
Casting Kira: Light Yagami Actors Across the Globe
KrisztiƔn Kolovratnik Hungarian Light Yagami dub actor
Tatsuya Fujiwara Light Yagami movie actor
Krisztián Kolovratnik and Tatsuya Fujiwara share a birthday on May 15th
Kenji Urai Light Yagami musical actor
Masataka Kubota Light Yagami TV actor
Kenji Urai and Masataka Kubota share a birthday on August 6th
Yeong-Seon Kim Korean Light Yagami dub actor
Nat Wolff US Light Yagami movie actor
Yeong-Seon Kim and Nat Wolff share a birthday on December 17th
So what you've got here is a well-known 'birthday problem'. If you're in a room with significantly less than 366 people, it turns out it's already very likely to have two people with the same birthday.

For the sake of simplicity let's assume that February 29th doesn't exist, which shouldn't affect calculations too much, but also that somebody is equally likely to be born on every day of the year. The latter is obviously not true because there are certain times of year where more babies are born than others for various reasons, but it still shouldn't take away the basic argument here.

Let's first think about the probability that *nobody* shares a birthday - after all, if you know the probability that nobody shares a birthday, you know the probability that at least two people share a birthday! Consider this:
  • Person 1 doesn't have anybody to share a birthday with yet.
  • Person 2 has a 364/365 chance to not be born on the same day as person 1.
  • Person 3 has a 363/365 chance to not be born on the same day as person 1 and 2.
and so on.  Following this and calculating it out, it turns out that you only need 23 people in a room to have a 50% chance of two sharing a birthday, and 70 people for a 99.9% chance!
Another way of looking at it which may be easier to understand is this:

Suppose you have a room filled with N people [Matti helpfully supplies image to illustrate point - see right], where N is any whole number (because you can't have half a person, unless it is a corpse...).  
  • Person 1 has N-1 people to check his birthday with.
  • Person 2 has N-2 people to check his birthday with (because we don't want to check person 1 again).
  • Person 3 has N-3 people to check his birthday with.
and so on.

That means that in a room of 23 people, or N=23, then person 1 (23-1) has 22 people to check his birthday with, person 2 (23-2) has 21 people to check his birthday with, and so on... You end up having 253 possible combinations of people, and so 253 possible birthday checks, which is a lot!

By these maths, it's actually pretty unexpected that the twenty-two aforementioned Light Yagami actors have three pairs of people sharing a birthday. 
Death Note Maths: A room filled with N

Supposed room filled with N
There is one important thing to consider here: it is probably fair to assume that these people are fairly unrelated. Because of this, one pair of birthdays doesn't make another pair more or less likely. Considering there are 7 billion people in the world and these actors were picked from that number, there is nothing to connect their birthdays unless their parents knew each other and agreed to have a baby on the same date (which would be impressive in and of itself!)

Actually working out specific numbers is quite difficult. I took a quick look at my university's digital library and couldn't find any research papers on anything beyond the canonical birthday problem (i.e. purely looking at the probability of two people sharing a birthday).

Nevertheless, the Kira Actors Birthday Phenomenon pings against a known mathematical problem, and the probability pans out.

Posted as part of

Month of Light Yagami
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