24 March 2010

Word problems are my favorite

The readership here is not very large but it is overeducated. So you'll love this word problem that my friend sent me. It's not meant to be super challenging, just a probability refresher for those of you that enjoy that kind of thing.

I already sent my answer in, so I'll post that after y'all have had a chance to ruminate on this a little. I have no idea if my answer is right but I took a shot at it, if for no other reason to find out how wrong I am.

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This is super annoying. i don't even remember how to do probability.

how do you do this. i need to answer the questions below.
Season tickets for men's basketball games cost graduate students $150 plus camping for a weekend. At this price, quantity demanded is 3 times quantity supplied, so a lottery is held at the end of the camp-out weekend. Lottery winners receive an entire season of tickets while losers receive nothing. Prior to learning who will win tickets, some students create groups in which they agree to divide the tickets evenly among the group. For simplicity, assume that there are 12 game tickets per season.
Does pooling change the mean number of game tickets that a student receives?
If two students agree to pool tickets, what are the odds that they will get some tickets (at least 1 set)?

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If that's too highbrow don't fret: we'll be bringing back the dick jokes in short order. (Get it! short order! Honk!)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Not enough information. You need to know WHERE the students would be camping. Also, their degree sought.

Zach said...

trick question. grad students only make $150/yr.

bsgarcia said...

Assuming you camp in the city park (under a bench, drunk) for free...

your odds of getting tickets for any PARTICULAR game (i.e., cal v ucla) should not change regardless of pooling or not, or the number of people in your pool.

Your odds of going to ANY game increases w/ pooling and the number of people your pool, up to 12 people. At more than 12 people the odds start to degrade according to some formula I have no desire to work out by some fraction, perhaps -1/12 per additional person?

or not