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Expected letters reaching the right firm at random

Question

You have written NN cover letters, one for a recruiter at each of NN firms, but have lost track of which letter belongs to which firm. You send exactly one letter to each firm, matching them by a uniformly random permutation. What is the expected number of letters that arrive at the firm they were written for?

Short answer

11. Each letter lands at its intended firm with probability 1N\tfrac1N. Summing these indicator expectations over all NN letters, which needs no independence, gives N⋅1N=1N\cdot\tfrac1N=1 for every NN.

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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