On Apr 24, 2006, at 8:24 PM, Alex Martelli wrote: > Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, >> Elliot Temple <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >>> Problem: Randomly generate 10 integers from 0-100 inclusive, and sum >>> them. Do that twice. What is the probability the two sums are 390 >>> apart? >> >> I think the sum would come close to a normal distribution. > > Yes, very close indeed, by the law of large numbers. > > However, very close (in a math course at least) doesn't get the cigar. > > You can compute the requested answer exactly with no random number > generation whatsoever: compute the probability of each result from > 0 to > 1000, then sum the probabilities of entries that are exactly 390 > apart.
That was the plan, but how do I get the probability of any given result? (in a reasonable amount of time) BTW I'm not in a math course, just curious. -- Elliot Temple http://www.curi.us/blog/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
