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PROJECT EULER · #0964

Musical Chairs Revisited

Statement only · SolvedOriginal problem ↗

A group of k(k1)/2+1 children play a game of k rounds.
At the beginning, they are all seated on chairs arranged in a circle.

During the i-th round:

  1. The music starts playing and i children are randomly selected, with all combinations being equally likely. The selected children stand up and dance around.
  2. When the music stops, these i children sit back down randomly in the i available chairs, with all permutations being equally likely.

Let P(k) be the probability that every child ends up sitting exactly one chair to the right of their original chair when the game ends (at the end of the k-th round).

You are given P(3)1.3888888889e2.

Find P(7). Give your answer in scientific notation rounded to ten significant digits after the decimal point. Use a lowercase e to separate the mantissa and the exponent.

Write-up coming later

The complete problem is available here. An approach, code, and answer will be added later.