Alternative Forms of The Problem
An interesting related problem, somewhat similar to the Birthday paradox is that of determining the size of the input set so that we have a probability of one half that there is a solution, under the assumption that each element in the set is randomly selected with uniform distribution between 1 and some given value.
The problem is interesting in that the solution can be counter-intuitive (not unlike the Birthday paradox). For example, with elements randomly selected in between 1 and one million, many people's intuition is that the answer is in the thousands, tens, or even hundreds of thousands, whereas the correct answer is approximately 23 (see Birthday problem#Partition problem for details).
Read more about this topic: Partition Problem
Famous quotes containing the words alternative, forms and/or problem:
“It is a secret from nobody that the famous random event is most likely to arise from those parts of the world where the old adage “There is no alternative to victory” retains a high degree of plausibility.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Culture’s essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life—this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)