Snakes on a math problem

[pbray]

There are n Snakes on the Plane. There are k Passengers on the Plane. Each Snake will Bite One Passenger at Random. What is the Probability that The Target, Mr. X, does not get bit?

Click here to see the solution.

Comments

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

Without looking at THE answer:
Mr.X doesn't get bitten at all 'cause he missed the flight after I told him that I had a vivid premonition that his life would be in danger if took that flight. He listened and took a later flight.

(And because I can't do algebra worth beans). :-)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Who needs to know math when you have psychic powers on your side?

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

That's the way I feel about it. :-)

[janni.livejournal.com]

Now if you really wanna have fun, assume each person can only get bitten once ('cause the snake victims die instantly, and since these are genetically engineered SmartSnakes, they know, and go off looking for someone else to kill).

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I want to know how many snakes get bitten by people. Huh? Why do they always assume the humans won't bite back? Smacks of species discrimination to me.

Though there is a story in those genetically engineered SmartSnakes...I just know there is.

[janni.livejournal.com]

And the best defense is a good offense, right?

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Precisely!

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

Who'd wanna bite a poisonous snake? A knife on a stick now...

[larryhammer]

And the math major scores again! w00t!

Well, sorta scores. I did the right math then flubbed the arithmatic. Which is, yanno, the math major's way.

I love prob/stats. The universe runs on combinatorics.

---L.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Yup. My friends yeep and jpsorrow are always telling me "I'm a MATHEMATICIAN not an ARITHMETICIAN." Or something like that. As a CompSci major I tune them out when they go geeky on me.

It's interesting to me how many writers I know turn out to have been math majors.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

*facepalm* Ooops. It's not yeep, it's jennifer_dunne. But same point holds.

[larryhammer]

*g*

I was actually a math+physics double major, and got my masters in physics -- with a minor in numerical methods. So, I was a computational physics person.

---L.

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

Egads! Mathematicians. Elitist geekery. ;-)