Starburst statistics brainteaser
So as I sit hear eating a starburst 2-pack (of which there is an entire drawer in the office), I started wondering about the probabilities they represented (clearly a busy day at work).
For people not familiar, there are four flavors, pink red orange and yellow, and each pack has two candies. The packs do have a left and right orientation, so in theory you could have 16 different candy combinations, if you consider 'right pink/left yellow' different from 'right yellow/left pink'.
Easy question: What is the probability that if you gathered 16 packs from a large population, you would have one of each combination?
Harder question: What is the probability that you would get one pack of each possible combination, if (like a sane person) you count 'right pink/left yellow' and 'right yellow/left pink' as being the same?
Harder question abstracted to dice: What is the probability of rolling 11 times and getting each number, 2 through 12, exactly once?
I may just be super tired, but the only answer I've come up with to second problem seems excessively fiddly and counterintuitive to me, though for some reason the third seems easier, since I'm used to thinking of statistics and dice.
Please spoilerify your answers for a few days so people who want to try it have a chance...I'll try to mull over a better answer to the second one (and third, by extension) and post it up when I get home.
__________________
twisted no more
Last edited by telekinetic; 12-10-2008 at 02:41 PM..
|