The Mathematics of 'Twelve Days of Christmas'
Amy Thompson · 2014
The popular Christmas carol ‘The 12 days of Christmas’ contains 12 verses, each describing the gifts given by the singers’ ’True Love’. The style of the song is cumulative, where in each verse, another gift is added and the frequency of the present also increases by 1. The following article explores the maths behind the song, including calculating the probability of receiving each gift individually.