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Ant_222 Posted 18 years ago
Jokes, Puzzles & Riddles

Mad old lady riddle

 Here's another riddle that may serve as five-minute excersize for your gray cells...
 There's a queue of twenty people to a twenty-seat bus, and a mad old lady is first in the queue. And, due to her mental illness, she chooses a random seat instead of the one specified on her ticket. The others board the bus one after another trying to take their own seat, but, if they find it occupied, they have nothing to do than choose a random seat of those that are still vacant.
Ant the question is, what are the chances for the last person in queue to take their own seat? 
  

Top answer

1 out of 20

— Anonymous

  • 1 out of 20
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20 Answers
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Guessing or what?
That's wrong!
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Hm, i think it is 50/50? There is only one place left for the last person, so it is either his/hers or not. But im not sure, hm tough, aye.
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Hmmm. I might as well say I have 50/50 chances of meeting a dinosaur... Either I meet one or not.
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Is it 19/20 x 18/19 x 17/18, etc? until you're at 1/2?
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GG: I am not sure you'll end up with 1/2 that way. Rather, you'll get 1/20 in the end, which is not correct Emotion: wink
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No, I mean 19/20 x 18/19 x 17/18 .... 2/3 x 1/2
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 GG: Then, as I said, it equals 1/20.
(Every number in the production has a pair except the 20 in the denominator and the 1 in the numerator)
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Sorry, I misread. I though you wrote "1/2" not "1/20" and that you had misread what I had written thinking I mean it would resolve itself as 1/2.
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GG: You were right. First I indeed thought you meant that thing equaled 1/2, which is reflected in the first sentence of that post of mine. A second later, however, I understood you had written a multiplicative series, so in the second sentence I wrote what it equals to. That post is simply self-contradicting
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