You’re waiting to board your flight at the airport with 99 other passengers, each with an assigned seat. All but one of the passengers will gladly sit in their designated seat. The only exception is Randall, a scoundrel who refuses to follow the rules. When he boards, he will choose a random, unoccupied seat.
If a rule-following passenger finds someone in their spot, they will choose another one at a random from the remaining unoccupied seats.
What is the probability that the last person to board the plane will sit in their proper seat?
The randomness stops as soon as someone else sits in Randall’s assigned seat. The chances of this happening range from 1 out of 99 to 1 out of 1 (when only one seat remains).
Thus, the probability of the last person sitting in their own seat can be calculated as 1/99 plus the sum of 2 to 98 of the formula 1 / n × (n + 1), which works out to 0.5, or 50%.
So there’s a 50% chance the last passenger will sit in their own seat thanks to Randall for screwing up order and procedure when boarding an aircraft.
Fish. The gh is pronounced as in tough, the o as in women and the ti as in nation. Ghoti is a constructed word to illustrate irregularities in English spelling.
The four suits in a deck of standard playing cards
The Spade is a gardener’s tool.
The Diamond is the hardest gem to break. “Little Girl and Queen” is a Mother Goose rhyme, in which the Queen gave the girl a large diamond for picking the Queen some roses.
The Heart bonds with the mind to form love. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
The Club, or Clover, is three dots connected around a stem.
I never was, am always to be. No one ever saw me, nor ever will. And yet I am the confidence of all, To live and breathe on this terrestrial ball. What am I?
Pencil lead. While modern pencils don’t contain lead, that’s still what we call the graphite compound. When real lead was used in pencils it was mined and nearly everyone has used a pencil at some point in their life.
Noreen doesn’t have a driver’s license and goes the wrong way on a one-way street, then turns left at a corner with a “No left turns” sign. A policeman sees her but does nothing. Why?
A dear old relative passed away recently and her family gathered for the reading of the will. The final item was the Chalk Emerald, a priceless gem. The will bequeathed it to whoever determined where it was hidden. The only clue was it was in a cylinder surrounded by a thousand squares. A young lass of barely six immediately piped up saying she knew where it was hidden and she was correct. Where was the hiding place?
Mark suggested two alternative solutions: A cylindrical chimney or a well, the squares being the bricks. Although most bricks aren’t square, it’s conceivable I guess.