Group size maximising expected unshared birthdays
Question
For a group of people with independent birthdays uniform over days, let be the expected number of days on which exactly one person in the group has their birthday. Two integers tie for the largest value of . What is their sum?
Short answer
. By linearity, , since each person is alone on their day with that probability. The ratio equals exactly at , so is the maximum.
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Expectation, Mean, and Variance
- Conditional Expectation and Variance Revisited
- Series and the Geometric Series: Partial Sums and Convergence
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