At a movie theater, the manager announces that they will give a free ticket to the first person in line whose birthday is the same as someone who has already bought a ticket. You have the option of getting in line at any time. Assuming that you don't know anyone else's birthday, that birthdays are distributed randomly throughout the year, etc., what position in line gives you the greatest chance of being the first duplicate birthday?

from http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/hard.shtml

(In reply to Random Guess by Barrett Hasseldine)

I'm sure many people expected to see e somewhere in the answer. It hasn't shown up anywhere I've looked.

This reminds me of a problem I've seen called 'fattest stack' or something like that. e pops up in that one.

-Jer

Posted by Jer on 2004-03-31 12:19:22