Dear all,

I just come back from lunch where the following happened:

I sat at the table with ten persons, five on each side of the table.
Everybody can choose between two meals: paella or chicken.
Incidentally, those five people on the one side all had chicken, the
other five had paella.

Has anybody an idea on how to calculate that probability?

Thanks in advance

Uli

On 2007-01-18 08:42:21 -0400, "gauger" <ulrich.gauger@gmail.com> said:

Dear all,

I just come back from lunch where the following happened:

I sat at the table with ten persons, five on each side of the table.
Everybody can choose between two meals: paella or chicken.
Incidentally, those five people on the one side all had chicken, the
other five had paella.

Has anybody an idea on how to calculate that probability?

Thanks in advance

Uli

If the five on one side were women and chose chicken while
the five on the other side were men and chose paella then
you would seem to have a nifty example of selection bias.

Selection bias upsets the freshman combinatorics examples
to make rare things happen much more often. And make other
configarations happen even less often.

All of which is commentary about how seriously to take the
combinatorics results. I will leave it to others to provide
those answers.

In other words... "birds of a feather flock together". I've seen this
sort of seating arrangement happen many times, as at a conference room
table where all the chemists sat on one side and the chemical engineers
sat on the other side. This is not a "probability" that can be
calculated. It's human nature. OMU

There might also be some reporting bias: a coincidence happened, and was

Dear all,

I just come back from lunch where the following happened:

I sat at the table with ten persons, five on each side of the table.
Everybody can choose between two meals: paella or chicken.
Incidentally, those five people on the one side all had chicken, the
other five had paella.

Has anybody an idea on how to calculate that probability?

Thanks in advance

Uli