Originally posted by wolfgang59 What I meant was that after each 1 minute period either one bottle would fall or no bottles would fall and the odds would be even.
Hence the quickest time for all to fall would be 10minutes and possibly they may never all fall.
After how many minutes would it be a good bet (ie >50'%'😉 that they have all fallen?
I dont know.
I still say that after 19 minutes, there is exactly a 50% chance that all bottles have fallen.
Originally posted by wolfgang59 What I meant was that after each 1 minute period either one bottle would fall or no bottles would fall and the odds would be even.
Hence the quickest time for all to fall would be 10minutes and possibly they may never all fall.
After how many minutes would it be a good bet (ie >50'%'😉 that they have all fallen?
I dont know.
I don't think the problem formulated like that makes much sense (and I think ATY would agree with me here), but abstracting from that in that case forkedknight's solution is mathematically correct.
Originally posted by forkedknight I thought wolfgang just meant that the bottles had to fall in sequence, with the first bottle in the row having a .5 probability of falling each minute.
Apparently you're correct, but it doesn't make much sense to me to consider it implies it is as likely that no bottle falls when we have 10 bottles on the wall as when there is only 1. Still... The problem is what the problem is, so you're right and I was wrong. 🙂
10 green bottles
29 Jun '09 14:391 edit
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