2009 1A: B & C
I failed to solve them, but still record here where I got stuck
B. Crossing the road
I am not familar with techinques of modifying exisiting graph algorithms. Too little experience with it. That is why I was not sure what node in the graph should represent
C. Collecting cards
geometric distribution: number Y = X - 1 failure before the first success. Each failure is independent and has a failure rate p
coupon collector problem (CCP)
hyper geometric distribution:k success in n draws, without replacement from a finite populate of size N that contains exactly K success, i.e., N, K are upper bounds for n, k, respectively
Sharing the insight with CCP:
P(m, n) = after we have n different cards, what is the probability that we can get m new cards from the next package (in CCP m = 1)?
since now we have a handle at the state of having n cards, we will ask the expectation with n in it, i.e.
Ex(n) = # of expected packs to buy to collect n cards
and we can define Ex(n+ m) based on Ex(n) and P(m,n)
One problem I ran into is how to calculate P(m,n) with high enough precision. Turns out I should calculate binomial coefficient in a recursive way