Re: HSC 2015 2U Marathon
A way to think about it is, wherever Alice sits, the chairs needed are those Seats 1 and 2 that are two seats away from her chosen seat. So it doesn't matter where she sits, because we'll be doing the same 1/5 • 1/4 thing regardless.
Basically yeah; this is one of the things you learn in 3U perms and combs (symmetry of circular arrangements). So at the start, all seats are essentially the same, because we can rotate the circle containing just one person onto any other arrangement with just one person. To account for this rotational symmetry, the first person's position can just be fixed. This is why in perms and combs we would say the number of ways to sit 1 person at the table containing 6 seats is just 1; we wouldn't say 6, because these 6 "ways" are all really just the same (rotations of one another) (the chairs are assumed identical for these problems).so does seating Alice not matter to the probability in this case because it is a circle, and circles can start from anywhere?
A way to think about it is, wherever Alice sits, the chairs needed are those Seats 1 and 2 that are two seats away from her chosen seat. So it doesn't matter where she sits, because we'll be doing the same 1/5 • 1/4 thing regardless.
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