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Vamshi Jandhyala

Mathematics

Figurine Figuring

A Jane Street holiday puzzle: 78 figurines (12 drummers, 11 pipers, 10 lords, … 1 partridge) are shuffled and drawn without replacement until the partridge emerges. What is the expected value of the maximum count of any one figurine type drawn?

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Monte Carlo simulation gives an expected value of 6.87 (to two decimal places). The full Python simulation, which runs 10 million trials using a Counter for per-type counts, is in the PDF.


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