• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EST 20:34
CET 02:34
KST 10:34
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
RSL Revival - 2025 Season Finals Preview8RSL Season 3 - Playoffs Preview0RSL Season 3 - RO16 Groups C & D Preview0RSL Season 3 - RO16 Groups A & B Preview2TL.net Map Contest #21: Winners12
Community News
$21,000 Rongyi Cup Season 3 announced (Jan 22-Feb 7)8Weekly Cups (Dec 29-Jan 4): Protoss rolls, 2v2 returns6[BSL21] Non-Korean Championship - Starts Jan 103SC2 All-Star Invitational: Jan 17-1822Weekly Cups (Dec 22-28): Classic & MaxPax win, Percival surprises3
StarCraft 2
General
Chinese SC2 server to reopen; live all-star event in Hangzhou Weekly Cups (Dec 29-Jan 4): Protoss rolls, 2v2 returns SC2 All-Star Invitational: Jan 17-18 Weekly Cups (Dec 22-28): Classic & MaxPax win, Percival surprises Starcraft 2 Zerg Coach
Tourneys
$21,000 Rongyi Cup Season 3 announced (Jan 22-Feb 7) WardiTV Winter Cup WardiTV Mondays SC2 AI Tournament 2026 OSC Season 13 World Championship
Strategy
Simple Questions Simple Answers
Custom Maps
Map Editor closed ?
External Content
Mutation # 507 Well Trained Mutation # 506 Warp Zone Mutation # 505 Rise From Ashes Mutation # 504 Retribution
Brood War
General
Potential ASL qualifier breakthroughs? BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ I would like to say something about StarCraft BW General Discussion StarCraft & BroodWar Campaign Speedrun Quest
Tourneys
[Megathread] Daily Proleagues [BSL21] Grand Finals - Sunday 21:00 CET [BSL21] Non-Korean Championship - Starts Jan 10 SLON Grand Finals – Season 2
Strategy
Game Theory for Starcraft Simple Questions, Simple Answers Current Meta [G] How to get started on ladder as a new Z player
Other Games
General Games
Mechabellum Beyond All Reason Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Awesome Games Done Quick 2026! General RTS Discussion Thread
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
Vanilla Mini Mafia Mafia Game Mode Feedback/Ideas
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine Trading/Investing Thread
Fan Clubs
White-Ra Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Anime Discussion Thread
Sports
2024 - 2026 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List TL+ Announced
Blogs
Life Update and thoughts.
FuDDx
How do archons sleep?
8882
Psychological Factors That D…
TrAiDoS
James Bond movies ranking - pa…
Topin
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 2521 users

Rapists math problem - Page 2

Blogs > jtan
Post a Reply
Prev 1 2 All
jtan
Profile Blog Joined April 2003
Sweden5891 Posts
February 19 2008 19:35 GMT
#21
Correct~~!

But using that formula asta posted is almost cheating-.,-

Also, the formula doesn't at all require large n since the taylor expansion for 1/e converges amazingly fast. In the problem I said "a large number of rapists". You get 2 correct decimals already at n=5, and with n=20 you get 18 correct decimals.
Enter a Uh
FirstBorn
Profile Blog Joined March 2007
Romania3955 Posts
February 19 2008 21:27 GMT
#22
On February 20 2008 04:25 Cascade wrote:
Show nested quote +
On February 20 2008 02:52 clazziquai wrote:
On February 20 2008 02:42 Cascade wrote:
Solution.

+ Show Spoiler +
Let n be the number of rapists. That random guy can relabel the samples in n! different ways. n choices for where to put hte first label, n-1 for the second label, etc.

-----------------flawed------------
In how many ways can he label them such that he doesnt place the right name on any sample?
For the first label, he has n-1 alternatives. Lets say he places the first label on sample number i. Then the label i can go n-1 samples still, since the only one occupied is his own. So label i goes on sample j. Label j now can go n-2 samples, since i is occupied, and j is both occupied and forbidden. etc. Total number of possible "all innocent" labelings becomes
------------------flawed------------

(n-1)(n-1)(n-2)(n-3)...3*2*1 = n! / n <-- wrong

Now we see that the number of "all innocent" labelings is 1/n times as many as the total number of labels from which we can say that the probability of all the rapists going free is 1/n. Seems to fit with brute force for n=2 and n=3.


EDIT: found a flaw. And a misscalcualtion. sorry, just disregard.


You sound so smart lol. Didn't you solve another really hard math problem earlier? >_>

Is this statistics?


haha, thanks I guess. I've been posting in a few other threads like these yes...


What he means is that he solved all the problems in threads like these.
SonuvBob: Yes, the majority of TL is college-aged, and thus clearly stupid.
gwho
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
United States632 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-02-19 21:33:30
February 19 2008 21:30 GMT
#23
+ Show Spoiler +
0%, because now his fingerprints are all over the samples. they probably set up "connections" for every suspect. and anyone innocent wouldn't touch them.

too easy.

one giveaway is the fact that it's a "large number" of rapists. you should give a number of rapists like 100 or something.
jtan
Profile Blog Joined April 2003
Sweden5891 Posts
February 19 2008 22:21 GMT
#24
........

The fact that the actual number of rapists doesn't matter is what makes it interesting -_-
Enter a Uh
Slithe
Profile Blog Joined February 2007
United States985 Posts
February 19 2008 22:31 GMT
#25
It makes me happy to see that my blog has inspired other people to post up cool math problems. We should create a TL math ring :D
thoraxe
Profile Blog Joined March 2007
United States1449 Posts
February 19 2008 23:55 GMT
#26
man this is waaaaaaay harder than what i thought. I hate these theoretical probablility problems.
Obama singing "Kick Ass" Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yghFBt-fXmw&feature=player_embedde
imDerek
Profile Blog Joined August 2007
United States1944 Posts
February 20 2008 02:24 GMT
#27
this is called derangement
Least favorite progamers: Leta, Zero, Mind, Shine, free, really <-- newly added
dinmsab
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
Malaysia2246 Posts
February 21 2008 11:54 GMT
#28
Last time it was prisoners, now its rapist...

I like using prisoners moar.
..
jtan
Profile Blog Joined April 2003
Sweden5891 Posts
February 23 2008 17:16 GMT
#29
On February 21 2008 20:54 dinmsab wrote:
Last time it was prisoners, now its rapist...

I like using prisoners moar.

haha, next time slithe and I will construct a prison rape math problem!
Enter a Uh
jtan
Profile Blog Joined April 2003
Sweden5891 Posts
February 23 2008 18:09 GMT
#30
And yeah by request, here is a complete solution, pretty carefully explained. If you are not really into math but would like to know a little-> hit the spoiler buttons!


Ok, let's say there are n rapists, although this won't really matter.

The blood samples are can be labeled in N0:=n! ways.

In how many of these cases does atleast 1 label get the right bloodsample?

N1:=n*(n-1)! = n!

+ Show Spoiler +
first pick 1 of the rapists. Can do that in n ways, Say he got connected with his own bloodsample. Then randomly map the others names into samples in (n-1)! ways


And more generally. In how many cases does atleast i rapists get connected with the right sample?

Ni:=(n over i)*(n-i)!=n!/i!

+ Show Spoiler +
choosing first i from the rapists and giving them the right sample connection. Then randomly distributing the others. So this is the number of ways that could be done.


Now simply by the principle of inclusion/exclusion, N:=number of ways that nobody is connected with his own sample is:

N=N0-N1+N2-N3+...(-1)^i*Ni+...Nn

+ Show Spoiler +
This might be hard to grasp if you havn't seen it before, but it's a fun concept so I'll explain it briefly.

There are totally N0 ways. But then we counted too many, so we remove those cases where 1 guy (or more) got the right sample -> -N1. But then we counted too too few, because we took away some cases twice or more. So we have to add N2 and so on. Well might still be hard to see. Let's have a quick example.
+ Show Spoiler [example] +

25 people on tl.net:
12 plays starcraft
8 plays wc3
9 plays wow

4 plays sc and wc3
3 plays wc3 and wow
3 plays sc and wow

1 plays sc wc3 and wow

So of the 25, how many doesn't play?
One way of calculating this would be 25-(12+8+9)+(4+3+3)-1=5

Simple to understand if you think about it. Or draw venn diagrams.



Ok, if you convinced yourself, let's draw calculate the probability in the original question. p:=probability that no rapist is matched with his own sample=

N/N0=N/n!=1-1+1/2!-1/3!+1/4!-...+(-1)^n *1/n!

If you had kept going forever without stopping at the n:th term you have the taylor expansion for e^-1 exactly.

+ Show Spoiler +
In case you are not familiar with taylor expansions, this is a way to express (almost) any function as a infinite polynomial. This is done by constructing the polynomial so that it's function value and all power-derivatives have the same value for some point.
Taylor expansion for e can be calculated to

e^x=1+x/1!+x^2/2!+...+x^i/i!+...

using the point zero.

(wiki for taylor expansion)

Now take x=-1 to get the exact formula we were stuck with above!


so p=~1/e. The more terms we have in the expansion the closer we will get. Since the sum is alternating with decreasing terms it's simple to show that error=|p-1/x|<1/(n+1)!

So 20 rapists would give a smaller error from 1/e than 1/21!=extremy little.


Wow, this looks a lot more complex then it really is, hope I don't scare away some hs students from math If you take math at university it all comes step by step, and it's not really hard at all.

Cheers!
Enter a Uh
Prev 1 2 All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
AI Arena Tournament
20:00
Swiss - Round 1
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
WinterStarcraft348
StarCraft: Brood War
Shuttle 359
NaDa 41
Dota 2
LuMiX1
League of Legends
JimRising 234
Counter-Strike
summit1g8632
fl0m4903
minikerr27
Super Smash Bros
hungrybox531
Mew2King42
Other Games
FrodaN12520
tarik_tv5387
B2W.Neo337
ToD209
KnowMe117
ViBE80
PiLiPiLi6
rubinoeu4
Organizations
Other Games
gamesdonequick52526
BasetradeTV59
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 19 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• HeavenSC 285
• Hupsaiya 78
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• sooper7s
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• Migwel
• intothetv
• LaughNgamezSOOP
StarCraft: Brood War
• RayReign 44
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
• BSLYoutube
Dota 2
• masondota23391
• WagamamaTV597
League of Legends
• Doublelift7502
Other Games
• imaqtpie2007
• Scarra881
• tFFMrPink 6
Upcoming Events
WardiTV Invitational
11h 27m
ByuN vs Percival
Percival vs Rogue
Percival vs Classic
ByuN vs Classic
ByuN vs Rogue
Classic vs Rogue
IPSL
18h 27m
DragOn vs Sziky
Replay Cast
1d 7h
Wardi Open
1d 10h
Monday Night Weeklies
1d 15h
WardiTV Invitational
2 days
WardiTV Invitational
3 days
The PondCast
4 days
All Star Teams
6 days
INnoVation vs soO
sOs vs Scarlett
CranKy Ducklings
6 days
[ Show More ]
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Proleague 2026-01-10
Big Gabe Cup #3
META Madness #9

Ongoing

C-Race Season 1
IPSL Winter 2025-26
BSL 21 Non-Korean Championship
OSC Championship Season 13
Underdog Cup #3
NA Kuram Kup
eXTREMESLAND 2025
SL Budapest Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 8
BLAST Rivals Fall 2025
IEM Chengdu 2025
PGL Masters Bucharest 2025

Upcoming

CSL 2025 WINTER (S19)
Escore Tournament S1: W4
Acropolis #4
IPSL Spring 2026
Bellum Gens Elite Stara Zagora 2026
HSC XXVIII
Rongyi Cup S3
Thunderfire SC2 All-star 2025
Nations Cup 2026
BLAST Open Spring 2026
ESL Pro League Season 23
ESL Pro League Season 23
PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026
IEM Kraków 2026
BLAST Bounty Winter 2026
BLAST Bounty Winter Qual
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.