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Last passenger's seat after a random first pick

Question

A plane has 100100 seats and 100100 passengers board in order, passenger ii holding a ticket for seat ii. The first passenger ignores the ticket and sits in a uniformly random seat. Every later passenger takes their own seat if free and otherwise a uniformly random free seat. You board last. What is the probability you get your own seat?

Short answer

1/21/2. The process ends when someone takes either seat 11 or seat 100100. Every random choice treats those two seats symmetrically, so seat 11 is equally likely to be claimed first, in which case you get your seat.

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

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