How Are 100 Names Placed in a Box?
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Now, the last ball must be placed in an empty box or a non-empty box. The probability of placing it in an empty box is E_9/5 because, well, there are E_9 empty boxes out of the 5. Thus, E_9/5 of the time, you’ll have E_9 – 1 empty boxes; the rest of the time, you’ll have E_9 empty boxes, that is]
Is there a way to save 50% of the prisoners?
I argue that 50% of the prisoners can be saved: regardless of any ordering of the prisoners names in boxes, in any given string of 50 boxes (a string need not be consecutive) there are exactly 50 names which correspond to exactly 50 of the 100 prisoners.