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

[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. ;-)