RobinZ comments on Open Thread, August 2010-- part 2 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: NancyLebovitz 09 August 2010 11:18PM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 29 August 2010 10:20:18PM 7 points [-]

Here's my solution. The descendants of each initial blob spawn independently of descendants of other initial blobs, so this is a sum of N independent distributions. The number of descendants of one initial blob is obviously the geometric distribution. Googling "sum of independent geometric distributions" gives Negative binomial distribution as the answer.

Comment author: RobinZ 30 August 2010 12:39:51AM 1 point [-]

Agreed - there are never more than N breeding blobs, each success increases P by one, and each failure reduces the remaining number of breeding blobs by one. Essentially, if r = N, X = P-N.