Questions tagged [probability-theory]
Challenges which involve computing probabilities for random variables and stochastic processes.
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Knockout probabilities
Knockout is a basketball game where players take turns shooting. It is played as a sequence of two-player contests, each of which has the possibility of "knocking out" one of those players.
Suppose ...
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Probabilities - how high can you go?
I previously asked a question for how to compute a probability quickly and accurately. However, evidently it was too easy as a closed form solution was given! Here is a more difficult version.
This ...
user9206
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Calculate a probability exactly and quickly
[This is a partner question to Calculate a probability exactly ]
This task is about writing code to compute a probability exactly and quickly. The output should be a precise probability written as a ...
user9206
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Calculate a probability exactly
This task is about writing code to compute a probability exactly. The output should be a precise probability written as a fraction in its most reduced form. That is it should never output ...
user9206
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XKCD Bracket Probabilities
Today's XKCD is a sports-tournament style bracket, where the contestants are well-known names, put into groups of possibly confusing names.
Give the probability that a given contestant will win the ...
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Not Your Routine Bean Machine
Consider this ASCII version of a mechanism similar to a bean machine or plinko/pachinko game:
O
^
\ ^
^ ^ \
\ ^ / ^
U U U U U
1 2 3 4 5
The ...
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(Somewhat) Pedantic Birthday Paradox
Background
The birthday paradox is a popular problem in probability theory which defies (most people's) mathematical intuition. The problem statement is:
Given N people, what is the probability ...
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Prepare to... die?
Background
One source of ennui in tabletop role-playing games is dealing with rolls involving many dice. Casting a Disintegration spell may be instantaneous, but rolling and adding together 40 dice ...
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Are these dice nontransitive?
Nontransitive dice are nice little toys that defy our intuition in probability theory. We'll need a few definitions for this challenge:
Consider two dice A and B which are thrown at the same time. We ...
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Build a program to analyze coin flip sequence choices
In a puzzle in an old book of mine, a game is defined in which two players choose sequences of coin flips that they believe will appear first when a coin is repeatedly flipped. (It was actually odd ...
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Computer: you do the math
This challenge is partly an algorithms challenge, involves some math and is partly simply a fastest code challenge.
For some positive integer n, consider a ...
user9206
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Evaluate CDF of Student-t distribution
The goal of this codegolf is evaluating the cumulative distribution function of the student-t probability distribution. This is not trivial since there is no closed form and the function is dependent ...
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Uncertainty in the Timeline of a Day
Suppose your alarm wakes you up one morning, but you hit snooze so you can sleep for 8 more minutes. When it rings again you grudgingly get up and take a shower, which you estimate takes 15 to 17 ...
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Extreme Whitewater Canoeing
You are paddling a canoe down a fairly fast whitewater river. Suddenly, your paddles explode, and you find yourself in a dangerous situation hurtling down a river rapid without any paddles. Luckily, ...
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Calculate the probability of seeing a landmark when starting at a given point and walking straight in a random direction
Input 5 integers: Landmark X & Y, Starting Point X & ...
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Probability to win a hand of poker (Texas hold 'em)
Challenge:
In the last stage of a two players Texas hold 'em, given a two-card hand and five cards on table, determine your probability to win versus an opponent by the standard ranking of poker ...
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Calculate probability of getting half as many heads as coin tosses.
Write a program that, given a small positive even integer from standard input, calculates the probability that flipping that many coins will result in half as many heads.
For example, given 2 coins ...
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Fix a broken random function
A friend has an add-on card in their computer which generates a perfectly random number from 1 to 5 inclusive. Unfortunately, they spilt cola on it somehow, and it now generates only 2's for all ...
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