Enterprise has a crew of 1000 souls. 1000 / 365, means that on average 2 - 3 people share a birthday.

Plugging this into a birthday calculator, there’s a very high chance at least 7 people share a birthday on the Enterprise. Not only that, but there should only be 24 days in the year when Ten Forward isn’t occupied with a birthday party.

So given that birthday collisions are plentiful, and that birthdays are constantly happening, and that Ten Forward is the only bar in the whole damn ship… my question is: Why does Riker get to celebrate his alone with full fanfare?

Edit: Birthday Math you asked for it

  • The probability that anyone has a birthday on any given day is 1/365 and can be modeled with a Binomial distribution (Yes/No).
    • Y ~ Binomial(n=1000, p=1/365)
  • When the number of samples is large (ship of 1000 people) and the probability is small, you can model repeated Binomial distributions using a Poisson distribution (independently occurring random events at regular intervals kinda) with a mean of 1000/365.
    • Y ~ Poisson(μ = 2.74)
  • The probability mass function (area under the curve) gives you the probability of a value against that distribution, and for Poisson is PMF(Poisson) = e-μ*(μk / k!)
    • P(Y = K) = PMF(μ, k) (for K exact events, e.g. 10 birthdays)
  • So to calculate the probability of 10 birthdays in a year, you do: 365 * e-2.74*(2.7410 / 10!) = 0.155 days (i.e. zero)

The following python snippet gives you these outcomes:

Code 
import math
def poisson_pmf(mean, k):
     return(math.exp(-mean)*mean**k/math.factorial(k))

def num_days_with_birthdays(num_people, num_birthdays): 
    return(round(365*poisson_pmf(num_people/365, num_birthdays)))

souls = 1000
print(*(f"{n:2d} days with {x:2d} birthdays"
        for x in range(50)
        if (n := num_days_with_birthdays(souls, x))),
      sep="\n")

## For a ship of 1000 people in a 365 day/year cycle
24 days with  0 birthdays
65 days with  1 birthdays
88 days with  2 birthdays
81 days with  3 birthdays
55 days with  4 birthdays
30 days with  5 birthdays
14 days with  6 birthdays
 5 days with  7 birthdays
 2 days with  8 birthdays
 1 days with  9 birthdays

Edit2: In retrospect, Riker could have been one of those 65 people
Edit3: But even then! You don’t necessarily do your birthday on the exact day, but wait until the Friday or Saturday night to celebrate it, which would definitely have collisions. So Riker’s either super special, or an inconsiderate prick. There, solved it

  • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Ten Forward isn’t the only lounge on the ship, just the main fancy one with the staffed bar. There are observation lounges and other, smaller lounges scattered all throughout the ship. Maybe it’s just senior officers who get to have birthdays in the cool hangout spot, while others will just throw a party in whatever lounges are closest to their own quarters.

  • JohnJohnJohn@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 days ago

    Guys we forgot to take into account not everyone on the ship was born on earth. We have to figure out the average length of year for the average habitable planet in the federation. Also if they celebrate their birthdays based on when their birthday happens on their home planet then wouldn’t traveling at warp greatly speed up the relative birth days per 365 Voyager year? No, actually I’m pretty sure Riker is just an attention seeking smarmy manslut.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
    0·
    2 days ago

    Cuz he’s the boss, and everybody has to kiss the boss’s ass.

    Picard is the real boss, but everybody knows he’d get all pissy if they tried to throw him a birthday party. He’s such a grump.

  • Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Also, it is much more likely that the memo to reserve Ten Forward for Riker’s birthday made it to Picard in a timely fashion as since one of his friends would be putting this together. As his friends are all Heads of Department, the memo chain is Originator -> XO (Riker) -> CO (Picard).

  • festus@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Other people have great points, but also the crew work different shifts, so some birthday celebrations would happen while the main characters are sleeping.

  • hakunawazo@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 days ago

    At first glance I thought the trombone of Riker was one of the overly glittering admiral outfits of the early TNG.

  • Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Don’t forget, not everyone on the ship is from earth which means their birthdays might not be celebrated every 365 days (or at all, is it’s not part of their culture).

    • tetris11@feddit.ukOPEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      I would love to come from a planet with 100 days in a year. I’d be like “sorry guys, I’m not at work tomorrow, it’s the second of my three birthdays! I’m 106.”

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Keep in mind the entire crew doesn’t celebrate everyone’s birthday, and even if they did, they’d probably do the soulless corpo thing and do birthdays once a month.

    In any case, its also important to note that ten forward isn’t the only crew lounge.

  • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Not everyone makes a big public spectacle of their birthday. It’s more suspect that the cultural norms remained so similar.

    • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 days ago

      I’d also think that not every Ensign and Lt jg get a birthday party in Ten Forward.

      While, yes it is likely the biggest and probably most popular social location on the ship, it often does get closed for diplomatic events, at least 1 music recital, and Data’s poetry slam.

    • kossa@feddit.org
      0·
      2 days ago

      For all we know they select the whole crew of a starship to share the same birthday. So the hangover and downtime is minimized. And only one of the officers gets a cake, as a token to the whole crew. And Riker just wins the lottery every damn time, curious.