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Topic: Card throwing probability (Read 767 times) |
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Aryabhatta
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Card throwing probability
« on: Dec 29th, 2005, 2:43pm » |
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Not sure if this has been asked before...
Anyway, here goes:
p is an odd prime number. You have 2 decks of p cards each, each deck having cards numbered 1 to p, the numbers being written on the front face of the cards. You throw the cards up and they randomly fall to the floor. You now sum up the numbers on the cards which have fallen face up.
What is the probability that this sum is divisible by p?
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Aryabhatta
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Re: Card throwing probability
« Reply #1 on: Jan 3rd, 2006, 10:10pm » |
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What is wrong with this one? too easy/hard... seen it before?
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Barukh
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Re: Card throwing probability
« Reply #2 on: Jan 3rd, 2006, 10:47pm » |
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I would say not too easy, and not seen this before. 
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SMQ
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: Card throwing probability
« Reply #3 on: Jan 4th, 2006, 6:04am » |
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Well, since I'm more of an experimentalist than an analyst, I thought I'd investicate a few small cases:
p = 3: 24 / 26 ~ 1 / 2.66667
p = 5: 208 / 210 ~ 1 / 4.92308
p = 7: 2344 / 214 ~ 1 / 6.98976
p = 11: 381304 / 222 ~ 1 / 10.9999
p = 13: 5162224 / 226 ~ 1 / 13.0000
That should give you analytical types something to work with. 
--SMQ
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--SMQ
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Eigenray
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Re: Card throwing probability
« Reply #4 on: Jan 4th, 2006, 8:00pm » |
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Nice problem!
We need to count the number of subsets whose sum is divisible by p. Hint: I expected this to be roughly 4p/p. Of course it can't be exactly, but it's reasonable to assume that the solution will include a combinatorial proof that (4p-4)/p is an integer. I only know the one, so...
| hidden: | Clearly there is 1 subset with 0 cards, and 1 with 2p cards.
Now consider taking any subset of k cards, and adding 1 to each card (mod p), increasing the sum by k. If we do this p times, and k is relatively prime to p, then we get a cycle of p subsets, exactly one of which will have sum 0 mod p. This partitions the subsets of size other than 0, p, or 2p, of which there are 22p-1-(2pCpp)-1, and we count exactly 1/p-th of them.
Now consider a subset of size p. If it is not all from a single deck, then we can similarly cycle just the cards from the second deck, changing the sum by a number relatively prime to p each time. Thus we count exactly 1/p-th of these (2pCp)-2 possibilities, together with 2 ways of taking all p cards from a single deck.
Altogether, we have
2 + [ 22p - 2 - (2pCp) ]/p + [ (2pCp) - 2 ]/p + 2 = [ 4p + 4(p-1) ]/p. |
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Aryabhatta
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Re: Card throwing probability
« Reply #5 on: Jan 4th, 2006, 10:32pm » |
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Excellent! Well done Eigenray.
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Aryabhatta
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Re: Card throwing probability
« Reply #6 on: Jan 5th, 2006, 4:37pm » |
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here is another solution which uses generating functions...
Let P(z) = ( (1+z)(1+z2)...(1+zp) )2
We are looking for sum of coefficients of zkp where k starts at 0 and goes on...
Set Q(z) = P(z) + P(wz) + P(w2)+... + P(wp-1z)
where w is a pth root of unity.
We see that we are looking for Q(1)/p.
It is easy to see that P(wm) = 4 for 0 < m < p (Consider H(z) = zp -1 = (z-w)(z-w2)...(z-wp) and set z = -1)
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| « Last Edit: Jan 5th, 2006, 6:07pm by Aryabhatta » |
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