ON CHANGING MONEY AND THE BIRTHDAY PARADOX (O rozmienianiu pieniedzy i paradoksie urodzin)

The paper deals with two problems of discrete probability theory that can be included to a curriculum in mathematics or statistics at universities of economics. The first one addresses the question that is interesting for economists: in how many ways one can change a certain amount of money given a fixed set of denominations. One can answer the question using either theoretical or software tools (such as Matlab or Mathematica). The other problem deals with the birthday paradox and its generalization. It is an example when intuition fails.