Four of the 153 people interred in Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery who died on 3 August died in 1885.
The deaths in the Ancestry record for Beechwood range from 1874 to 1988, which is 114 years. There have to be days with more than one death. How much of a coincidence is four on exactly the same day?
According to the binomial distribution, the probability is 1.13%. Four deaths on the same day would be expected on at least three days of the year.
Carrying it further, exactly 5 out of 153 people dying on the same day of the same year over 114 years is approximately 0.003, or about 0.3%. That’s about one day in the year.
Much more than that would indicate an anomaly such as an epidemic or tragedy.
You might be surprised that almost a quarter of the years, 23.7%, would have no deaths. Ancestry’s Beechwood record shows 30 years have no burials for 3 August deaths.
1885 had a smallpox epidemic
Thanks for pointing that out, Gillian. None of the four were identified as smallpox fatalities. None of the Beechwood burials from May 1885 until February 1886 lists smallpox as the cause of death, although the newspaper does report cases in the city.