Source of a puzzle

There's a rather well-known math problem, 'The Airplane-Passenger problem', which goes like this:

An airplane has 100 seats, and 100 passengers were assigned seats. The first passenger, ‘Joe,’ enters the plane and rather than sitting in his assigned place, he sits in a random place. The next passengers come one by one and every passenger sits in his assigned seat if it is empty, and in a random empty seat if his seat is already taken. What is the probability that the last passenger ‘Jim’ will sit in his assigned seat?

I'm trying to find the original source of this puzzle to cite in a math essay, and I think it's in the book "Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur's Collection", but I don't have the book myself. However, I know it's in the Brilliant Points Exchange so I was wondering if someone could verify if this problem is really in the book? Any help is very much appreciated!

Easy Math Editor

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Comments

http://www.westfield.ma.edu/math/faculty/jaiclin/writings/general/airplane.problem.pdf http://www.brightbubble.net/2010/07/10/100-passengers-and-plane-seats/

Tim Ye - 8 years, 2 months ago

yes, i've seen those solutions. But I wanted to know if the problem was from Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur's Collection..

Manasa Kaniselvan - 8 years, 2 months ago

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `\(` ... `\)` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$