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The Happy Farmer (Posted on 2025-03-23) Difficulty: 4 of 5
Farmer Brown lives in a land where farms stretch far and wide. One day he wins the lottery and wants to tell his neighbors. He tells his nearest neighbor of his good fortune. What follows is an odd sort of transmission of the news: each person who hears it (as well as farmer Brown himself) tells only his nearest neighbor, no one else.

Whenever that nearest neighbor is the person who told him the news, that branch of the transmission is closed, as there's no point in telling the person who told you, and there's no substitution of the second nearest neighbor.

  1. What's the probability that the only person to get the news is the one farmer Brown called himself, due to farmer Brown being his nearest neighbor's nearest neighbor?
  2. What's the expected number of people, besides farmer Brown, who will get the news before the transmission dies out altogether?

Consider the land where this happens an infinite plane, with each farmer a randomly placed point with uniform probability density.

No Solution Yet Submitted by Charlie    
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Comments: ( You must be logged in to post comments.)
  Subject Author Date
re: Simulationbroll2025-03-26 00:27:42
Some ThoughtsSimulationLarry2025-03-25 23:08:54
some thoughtsbroll2025-03-24 07:34:51
Hints/Tipsre: Some thoughts?Charlie2025-03-23 21:39:07
Some thoughts?Kenny M2025-03-23 18:41:52
Some ThoughtsInitial thoughtsJer2025-03-23 14:03:59
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