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Meeting when arrivals are uniform on different windows

Question

A student will turn up at a time chosen uniformly between 4:00 and 5:00 PM. Independently, Gabe will turn up at a time chosen uniformly between half past four and five. Whoever arrives first waits at most 1010 minutes for the other and then leaves. What is the probability that they meet?

Short answer

1136\tfrac{11}{36}. In minutes after 4:00, Gabe is Unif(30,60)\text{Unif}(30,60) and the student Unif(0,60)\text{Unif}(0,60); they meet if the times differ by at most 1010. For Gabe's time g≤50g\le50 the student's window has length 2020, and for g>50g>50 it shrinks to 70−g70-g, so the favourable area is 400+150=550400+150=550 out of 18001800.

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

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