He got 2000 “wrong”… Or did he?

  • Cosmos7349@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Hey math people, if they all selected 1 of the 2 main candidates for every election, and they all selected different candidates, how many historians would it take to cover every combination for 10 years? (bonus points to see how many would take before guaranteeing someone could get 9/10)

    • Sami@lemmy.zip
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      4 months ago

      1024 historians assuming they all pick different combinations at random. Probability of randomly guessing at least 9 of 10 goes up to 1.075% or 93 historians (on average to get one person with 9/10 predictions right) or like the other commenter mentioned 1024-11= 1013 to guarantee a 9/10 but that’s a little overkill.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      4 months ago

      Note that many of those elections were easier to guess than just flipping a coin, so you don’t really need to cover every potential combination to cover like 95% of the likely outcomes.