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Matching Matchbox Muse (Posted on 2010-03-30) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Professor X smokes a pipe. He carries two identical matchboxes, originally containing 20 matches each. When he lights his pipe, he chooses a matchbox at random and lights his pipe with one match and discards the used match.

There will eventually arise an occasion when he first selects a matchbox with only one match in it. At this point, what is the expected number of matches in the other box?

No Solution Yet Submitted by K Sengupta    
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  Subject Author Date
re(6): Corrected Solution after Charlie's commentsCharlie2010-07-21 13:44:44
re(5): Corrected Solution after Charlie's commentsDan Rosen2010-07-20 14:37:31
re(4): Corrected Solution after Charlie's commentsCharlie2010-07-02 19:18:28
re(3): Corrected Solution after Charlie's commentsCharlie2010-07-01 20:11:51
re(2): Corrected Solution after Charlie's commentsDan Rosen2010-07-01 18:52:42
re: Corrected Solution after Charlie's commentsCharlie2010-06-29 17:32:52
SolutionCorrected Solution after Charlie's commentsDan Rosen2010-06-29 15:00:37
Solutionre(2): New print out of previous solutionCharlie2010-06-29 12:27:07
re: New print out of previous solutionCharlie2010-06-29 11:42:53
re: re Charlie's solutionCharlie2010-06-29 11:32:14
SolutionNew print out of previous solutionDan Rosen2010-06-28 18:31:39
re Charlie's solutionDan Rosen2010-06-28 18:13:10
SolutionSolutionDan Rosen2010-06-11 15:44:29
SolutionsolutionCharlie2010-03-30 15:27:18
Reference (not solution)ed bottemiller2010-03-30 14:00:20
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