The Absent-Minded Passengers Problem: A Motivating Challenge Solved by Computer Algebra
Combinatorics
2020-06-25 v2 Symbolic Computation
Abstract
In (S.B. Ekhad and D. Zeilberger, 2020) an exciting case study has been initiated in which experimental mathematics and symbolic computation are utilized to discover new properties concerning the so-called Absent-Minded Passengers Problem. Based on these results, Doron Zeilberger raised some challenging tasks to gain further probabilistic insight. In this note we report on this enterprise. In particular, we demonstrate how the computer algebra packages of RISC can be used to carry out the underlying heavy calculations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2003.01921,
title = {The Absent-Minded Passengers Problem: A Motivating Challenge Solved by Computer Algebra},
author = {Carsten Schneider},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.01921},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
Removed various typos and inserted an extra link for a Mathematica notebook to repeat the (not-so-costly) calculations