A trading card series has 200 different cards in it, which are sold in 5-card packages.

Each package has a random sampling of the cards (assume that any card of the 200 has an equal chance of being in a package).

On the average, how many packages will need to be bought to collect the complete series if...

A: all the cards in a package will always be different

B: a package can have repeats

I don't think this problem has a practical solution.In the case of (a) one has to assume an infinite number of boxes each containing a set of the 200 cards. One takes five cards from the first box then takes 5 cards from the second box and so on. As can be seen at any time you may be getting the same cards or a different five each time. The number of different combinations that can be had is a figure too large to comprehend. However, this is not about odds it's about probability. Even so, if you used the same kind of maths as the birthday conundrum, you would still have a figure that is realistically to large I believe.( As for (b) that would be even worse. We all can work out the probability of any five card hand from a deck of cards of 52. But from 200 Phew!!!!!

Posted by terry on 2003-01-19 19:17:29