On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 4:55 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Wed, 8 Apr 2015 12:32 am, Ian Kelly wrote: > >> On average, a random Oracle with a search space of 1000000 will need >> 1000000 guesses. > > Surely on average it will only take 500000 guesses? > > Best case is that it gets lucky the first time (1 guess). Worst case is that > it guesses every wrong answer until there is only one answer it hasn't > given, which is right (1000000 guesses). I assume that the Oracle is smart > enough to never repeat a guess.
I didn't make that assumption. With replacement, the mean is 1000000, per the binomial distribution. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
