A Question Of Flippos

Here's the problem (usually called the "coupon collector's problem"):

A cereal manufacturer has included a "flippo" with each box of its product. The flippos come in 5 different types. Many people will want to have one of each. Assuming that all 5 flippos are produced in equal amounts, and that the total number of flippos is very large, how many boxes of cereal, on average, would a person have to buy to get a complete set of flippos?

And here are some shots of Chance students running their simulations in an effort to solve the problem experimentally:

By way of a check on our results, the 154 trials run by the class yielded a mean of 11.31 boxes of cereal to collect all 5 flippos.  This is in close agreement with the theoretical value of 11.43.

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Last modification: 27 August 02008.
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