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Rumor Rithmetic (Posted on 2008-04-25) Difficulty: 2 of 5
You start a rumor by telling it to n people and each of them tells it to another n-1 people. If each of these people, in turn, tells the rumor to another n-2 people, and so forth with no person hearing the rumor from more than one source, find a closed-form expression (in terms of n) for the total number of people that have been told the rumor.

No Solution Yet Submitted by Dennis    
Rating: 2.7500 (4 votes)

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re(2): computer aided solution (spoiler) Comment 3 of 3 |
(In reply to re: computer aided solution (spoiler) by Dej Mar)

The sixth paragraph of Sloane's A007526 has the caption "FORMULA", the first line of which contains the following text:

"a(n) = [ e*n! - 1 ] (J. K. Horn)." 

Edited on January 7, 2009, 12:17 pm
  Posted by K Sengupta on 2008-04-26 06:15:04

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