"NY" wrote in message
...
Years ago, at a party while I was at university, the conversation turned
(as it sometimes does after a lot of alcohol has been consumed) to lateral
thinking puzzles, mostly involving people dying is ways that make murder
look like suicide - or indeed suicide look like murder, and involving
people of restricted stature, failed tape recordings, piles of sawdust or
puddles of water.

One person said "More people die on their birthday than any other day. Why
is this?" This was presented as if it were a fact. We had no way of
knowing whether it was indeed the case - it was long before Wkipedia and
articles such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_effect which
describe the effect and give various medical reasons.

We tried all the obvious things like "does this include babies that are
born dead or who die within a few hours" and "does it include
alcohol-related accidents when people do stupid things at their birthday
party". No, we were told. We were over-thinking the problem and
over-complicating it. The reason was blindingly obvious. The question
became really quite smug (to the point that I could see some of my mates
were itching to punch his lights out!) and said that the teacher had asked
the question when he was a lad at school; although he'd never been asked
it before or even thought about it, he got the answer immediately. He was
amazed than none of us could work it out. "Is this true in all cultures?"
"Is it true even if you don't know the date and therefore whether today is
your birthday?" He just smiled smugly and repeated that we were thinking
far too deeply and analytically about it.

Sadly we never did find out the answer: it was left as "I'll let you think
about it. Come and tell me when you eventually work out the answer" and I
never saw him again.

Can anyone think of a logical reason, which doesn't involve
alcohol-related accidents, people who are terminally ill holding out until
their next birthday, depression/suicide "I'm a year older than I was" etc?
Something which is "blindingly obvious" even to a ten-year-old at school?

He's right. The reason is that the day of the year that people are born
on isnt evenly distributed over the year, so it is considerably more likely
that you will die on the same day of the year for that reason.