Reply #24: English is not well suited for explaining probability problems

[pokerfan]

It lacks the rigor of mathematics and it doesn't help that I have only a tenuous grasp of my only language. All I can say is that I trust my math and mainegreen's 10,000,000 trials which lend corroboration.

It's an old problem dating back to the seventeenth century and quite famous actually. Googling 'Chevalier de Mere' and 'Blaise Pascal' yields 625 pages on the subject. One of the better papers is http://www.probabilitytheory.info/topics/periodic_events.htm which explains it quite well, I think.

From reading that page it's interesting that Abraham de Moivre came up with an answer of 24.9516 in 1716. Which was too high.

John Scarne came up with 24.2585 in 1961. Which is too low.

Interesting to note that page comes up with the same formula as I did: n = log 2/(log 36 -log 35) but then evaluates it incorrectly. They say that n has a value of 24.6721? I keep getting 24.6051.