Wanna make a 100g? Solve a problem!

[Cambarth]

syntax53 wrote:

1 Minute = 60 seconds? I only converted to seconds because 4.8 minutes didn't seem to be acceptable. False accuracy? It's still accurate, moreso even. Doing it by seconds it comes down to 4.99 minutes where as doing it by minutes it comes down to 4.8 minutes.

I was wrong about the false accuracy, but you're more or less just proving probability then

[Kobetauren]

socksnogger wrote:

Justin, The expected value is close to 5 minutes. It depends on how specific you want to get when figuring it out but doing it at 1 minute intervals, you get ~4.9 minutes. If you want to do 30 second intervals, 15 second intervals, 1 second intervals, you can figure that out yourself.

I get the actual solution, but Matt's wasn't explained at all, so when I read his solution there was so much vagueness and hand-waving that it seemed like he magicked an answer close to right out of the numbers. The adding of all the minutes in different steps and then dividing out to average after wasn't very transparent to me.

Essentially, his solution made as much sense to me as saying that the bus starts at B (1st hit), does the AB loop (2nd hit) in 4 minutes, and then does the BC loop (3rd hit) in 12 minutes, and (4+12)/3 = ~5

[2b]

Wow I didn't realize this went on after I posted the answer. But the answer is indeed 5. I can find where this problem came from if you guys really want.

This problem was presented to MIT students to see who would figure out the most basic thing. Which is that the average wait time is NOT 4 minutes. Average wait times are 6 and 2 minutes. The factor that must be looked at is that at any given time of the day you are 3 times more likely to wait for the longer route. So this makes 6+2=8/2=4 the wrong solution to the problem.