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January 17, 2017 09:07
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Solves for the birthday candle riddle at FiveThirtyEight
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| #The riddle can be found at https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-long-will-it-take-to-blow-out-the-birthday-candles/ | |
| tests = 10000000 | |
| blows <- rep(0,tests) | |
| i = 1 | |
| while (i <=tests) { | |
| candles = 30 | |
| while (candles > 0) { | |
| blown_out = sample(1:candles, 1) | |
| candles = candles - blown_out | |
| blows[i] <- blows[i] + 1 | |
| } | |
| i = i+1 | |
| } | |
| mean(blows) |
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