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submitted 2 days ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

He got 2000 "wrong"... Or did he?

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[-] Cosmos7349@lemmy.world 37 points 2 days ago

Hey math people, if they all selected 1 of the 2 main candidates for every election, and they all selected different candidates, how many historians would it take to cover every combination for 10 years? (bonus points to see how many would take before guaranteeing someone could get 9/10)

[-] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 16 points 1 day ago

Note that many of those elections were easier to guess than just flipping a coin, so you don't really need to cover every potential combination to cover like 95% of the likely outcomes.

[-] Sami@lemmy.zip 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

1024 historians assuming they all pick different combinations at random. Probability of randomly guessing at least 9 of 10 goes up to 1.075% or 93 historians (on average to get one person with 9/10 predictions right) or like the other commenter mentioned 1024-11= 1013 to guarantee a 9/10 but that's a little overkill.

[-] steventhedev@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

Where does the 93 come from? The percentage is almost correct, but it should be 11 (1.074%)

[-] Sami@lemmy.zip 9 points 2 days ago

93 for 1/0.01075

this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
321 points (89.2% liked)

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