POLL: Pirate map :)

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Okay, the question is the following: a kid goes to McDonalds and gets a happy meal. This comes with one of eight parts of a pirate map, which will lead to treasure . Assuming that each time he eats at McD, he gets one part of the map at random, how many happy meals does he have to get before he has a 50% chance of obtaining the whole map?

(Any similarities with real persons or situations is purely incidental )

Poll Information
This poll contains 1 question(s). 15 user(s) have voted.
You may not view the results of this poll without voting.

Poll Results: Pirate map (15 votes.)

So, how many happy meals do you fancy eating (Choose 1)
* 8 to 10 - 7% (1)
* 11 to 16 - 0% (0)
* 17 to 25 - 7% (1)
* 26 to 35 - 20% (3)
* 36 to 45 - 27% (4)
* 46 to 55 - 7% (1)
* 55 to 70 - 7% (1)
* over 70 - 27% (4)

 

You do realize the kid doesn't have to eat the meal to get the map piece.

 

What, you mean take a kid to McD and not feed him ?! that's not the way things work around here

anyhow, I have no idea how many random pieces you need to make a whole map, but I guessed at about 40. Which seems quite a lot; I hope I don't have to find out

 

I guessed 32. I used to be quite good at this, but now I am terrible and I am probably wrong.

 

Any kid who gets a Happy Meal at Mickey Ds get it for the toy, not the food!

 

With just 4 visits, the odds of half the map are about 40%.

 

thwe problem is that the number of map pieces in total is infinite - or at least close to it. without knowing how many pieces there are in total, it is impossible to really say whow many you would need.

I think.

 

Well...I am unfimailiar with this current promo from McD, is there some actuall prizes to be had of you make a full map or something? If there is, MCd's phillosiphy is to always make 32 million copies of 7 of the 8 peices, and then towards the end of the "game" add in a hand full of the 8th peice that would make a winner. The thinking behind this is that that thois few winning peices will end up to people that have no intrest in the game and will toss it in the trash, or someone will get it who only has a few of the peices required...and once they get them all, the game is over.

So knowing McD, you'll probably get the same exact section of the map 5 times in a row.

 

Think that will help, Ara. Unless I'm reading it wrong, 8 would be the number you are after

 

8 is the number of the different pieces - but what about the total nnumber? because there is more than one of each piece. if we don't know that there's,s ay, 100 of each piece being given out in a single restaurant, we canöt tell how many meals are needed to get all the pieces.

 

In other words, we don't know the pot we're picking from. Something Kit well-represented with the way McD's rigs most of their contests. No sane business would put so many winning combinations out there when there's a pricey prize (like some of the better stuff in their occasional Monopoly things). OTOH, if there's no prize, they might just leave it with even distribution.

 

Ah, I understand you now, Ara. But still, I don't think you need that to work out how long it will take to have a 50% chance of getting all the peices.

 

Yes, you do. You need to know the distribution, the percentage chance of getting a particular piece. Now I'm betting that khaavern and everybody else is assuming that it's an even chance no matter how many of each you pick (which is highly doubtful in reality but plausible in a theoretical setting), but even that would be something that we need to know.

 

In this poll we are only looking for 50% of the map not the whole thing.

I picked in the 30 meal range but I think it would be possible to get 50% of the map sooner then that.

The whole map? Kitrax has it nailed. That last piece is going to be hard to come by.

 

Nope.

 

Something like this happened here some time ago: Burger King put up a challenge; you had to collect the letters of the words Playstation, so when you completed that, you got a PSP; an "unhappy" employee said to delighted kids that they would never get the PSP at that store, so one kid told this to his father who went to ask the employee why the heck he said that, the employee then told to the father: we get 500 boxes with letters from the word Playstation but the Y, so there's no way you can complete the word, at least here; and from what I've heard, there's no Y in any of the Barcelona's stores.
The father sued Burger King, but got nothing; BK said that the employee had no way to know the letters of the box... doh, the letter was written in the inside base of th box, where every employee could see the letters...

And this isn't new, I remember trying to get the final little picture to complete the collection just to get the football prize.

 

Like Fel said: 50% chance of obtaining the whole map.
With 7 pieces you are sure you don't have the whole map, so there's a 0% chance that you have the whole map.
There's a 12.5% chance that you get Piece A, or piece B, or any of the 8 pieces. And the chance that you get an other map piece does not increase when you got an other, because I did't hear any numbers there are of each mappiece. (You still understand me? I'm not that good in explaining such things in a foreign language)
To get a 50% chance you get 1 certain map piece you need 4 meals, that times 8 is 32.
But I probably did something wrong...

 

Ara (and Fel): for simplicity, let us assume that there is an equal chance of getting any of the different eight pieces with any meal. You are right that that's probably not exactly true (what you get depends on how many pieces of each type the restaurant has at the moment), but then it would be impossible to solve the riddle.

(also , I assume that McD is not cheating, and they put out an equal number of every piece)

Nakia: I want the whole map 50% refers to my chances of having the whole map once I gathered a certain number of pieces (let's say, 20 or 30).

Oh, and I think my original estimate of 40 was on the large side; now I think it should be something like 20-25; but I did not figure out yet how to find the exact solution ...

 

Holy Brehmen, all of this out of a simple poll? O_o

 

I agree with Kitrax. If this is anything like their "Dick Tracy" promotion, there will be one piece that is impossible to get. Man, I ate more Big Macs during that promotion than in the rest of my life put together, but I never heard of anyone catching sight of the elusive "Pruneface" card.