MHB What is the smallest value of n that assures at least a 50% chance that at least two students select the same integer?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jameson
  • Start date Start date
AI Thread Summary
The problem revolves around determining the smallest number of students, n, needed to ensure at least a 50% probability that two students select the same integer from a range of 1 to 10. This scenario is analogous to the Birthday problem in probability theory. By calculating the probabilities of all students choosing different integers and applying the complementary probability, it can be shown that n must be at least 5 to achieve the desired likelihood. The solutions provided by members MarkFL and anemone confirm this conclusion. Thus, the answer is that at least 5 students are required to ensure a greater than 50% chance of a shared selection.
Jameson
Insights Author
Gold Member
MHB
Messages
4,533
Reaction score
13
Each individual in a group of n students is asked to pick an integer at random between 1 and 10 (inclusive). What is the smallest value of n that assures at least a 50% chance that at least two students select the same integer?

Show your work! Intuition is not enough for this problem and might be wrong. :)

Hint: [sp]This problem is based off of the Birthday problem. You can use the same method to solve it.[/sp]
--------------------
 
Last edited:
Physics news on Phys.org
Congratulations to the following members for their correct solutions:

1) MarkFL
2) anemone

Solution (from anemone):
$\displaystyle \text{ P(at least two students select the same integer)} \ge 0.5$

$\displaystyle1-\text{P(all of the students select different integer)} \ge 0.5$

$\displaystyle 1-0.5 \ge \text{P(all of the students select different integer)}$

$\displaystyle 0.5\ge \text{P(all of the students select different integer)}$

$\displaystyle 0.5 \ge \frac{10!}{(10-n)!(10^n)} $

Now, by making a two-column table for both the values for $n$ and $\displaystyle \frac{10!}{(10-n)!(10^n)} $ and start calculating from $n=1$, we find that the smallest value of n that assures at least a 50% chance that at least two students select the same integer occurs when $n=5$.
 

Similar threads

Replies
5
Views
4K
2
Replies
67
Views
14K
Replies
13
Views
3K
3
Replies
105
Views
14K
4
Replies
175
Views
25K
Back
Top