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Testing Time Treat (Posted on 2023-12-15) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Alexa was coming up to her final exams, which were set across 18 days. Each of the 18 days had 2 sessions, a morning and an afternoon session. Alexa had to complete 6 exams altogether.

When the exam timetable was released, Alexa was very disappointed that she had 2 days on which she had to complete 2 exams, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, on that same day.

Determine the probability that Alexa would find her 6 exams set on just 4 days.

See The Solution Submitted by K Sengupta    
Rating: 5.0000 (1 votes)

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Solution More complicated solution / full dist. | Comment 2 of 3 |
My method was a bit more complicated than Charlie's but they agree:

Imagine choosing 6 objects out of a set of 36 which are paired, one by one.  Each choosing is either a Hit or a Miss.  Hit if it makes a pair, Miss if it doesn't. 
The first choice must be a Miss.  There cannot be more Hits than Misses at any point.  
The value of a Hit equals the number of available Misses before it.

For there to be exams on 4 days, we must have two Hits and four Misses.
Here they are, with their values:
MHMHMM 1x1=1
MHMMHM 1x2=2
MHMMMH 1x3=3
MMHHMM 2x1=2
MMHMHM 2x2=4
MMHMMH 2x3=6
MMMHHM 3x2=3
MMMHMH 3x3=9
MMMMHH 4x3=12
For a grand total 45.
The probability is thus 45*(36*34*32*30)/(36*35*34*33*32*21)=
90/2387

-----

I may as well share the rest of the distribution solved my way:

All tests on 3 days:
MHMHMH 1x1x1=1
MHMMHH 1x2x1=2
MMHHMH 2x1x1=2
MMHMHH 2x2x1=4
MMMHHH 3x2x1=6
Grand total 15.
15*(36*34*32)/(36!/30!)=1/2387

Tests on 5 days:
MHMMMM 1
MMHMMM 2
MMMHMM 3
MMMMHM 4
MMMMMH 5
Grand total 15.
15*(36*34*32*30*28)/(36!/30!)=840/2387

Tests all on different days
MMMMMM 1
(36*34*32*30*28*26)/(36!/30!)=1456/2387

  Posted by Jer on 2023-12-15 14:39:09
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