One by one straws are placed on a mathematical camel’s back.
The straws have random weight, being drawn independently from the uniform distribution 0 to 1.
The camel’s back breaks when the total weight of the straws exceeds 1.

What’s the expected weight of the straw that breaks the camel’s back?

Source: abridged from "Mind your decisions" blog.

I just searched for the blog referred to in the problem, and in fact the value 0.640859 corresponds to 2 - e/2.

Edited on July 28, 2014, 1:32 am

Posted by Larry on 2014-07-28 01:30:45