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Forum URL: http://www.cut-the-knot.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/forumctk.cgi
Forum Name: This and that
Topic ID: 129
Message ID: 1
#1, RE: playing with permutations...
Posted by Omar on Jul-31-01 at 11:02 PM
In response to message #0
In Chapter Three of The Unexpected Hanging and Other Mathematical Diversions, Martin Gardner briefly discussed the case in which the card and the location must match on both rank and suit. He computed the odds of no matches to be approximately 1/e, and, of course, the odds of at least one hit to be approximately 1-1/e, that is about .6321. Unfortunately, his calculation was done by means of an (apparently well known) result from combinatorics that does all the hard work and hides the guts of the problem.