QueasyJet Queueing

This weekend I got a message from an old friend of mine Robert Paine (better known in our maths class as Pean). He attached the following probability problem to his email knowing that I enjoy doing the occasional maths problem in my extensive free time.

There is a queue of passengers waiting to board a QueasyJet plane each with an allocated seat. The first person boards the plane and sits in a random seat which is not their allocated one. The next person gets on, and if their allocated seat is free they sit in it, otherwise they choose a seat at random from those remaining. Each person then follows that same rule: if their allocated seat is available they sit in it, otherwise they sit in a random free seat. What are the chances that the last passenger sits in their allocated seat?

It's the sort of thing that would turn up on a Maths Challenge paper but probably not a GCSE or A Level these days. It did prove a welcome distraction from the essay I have to write!

Viral Marketing?

I got an email this morning from Katherine Poll of Digeus Software the exact text of which is below. Now as my early blogs will attest, I do have an interest in the way internet will work for business and marketing in particular. This is a cool approach which I have not seen before. Digeus are offering what should be a useful software item for screen capture and asking in return to have their product mentioned on my blog. Now is it the fact that it is on my blog that interests them? Well of course the answer is in the postscript. You must not change the text Screen Capture Software which under the covers links this phrase with the company Digeus Software. So what you ask? Well I just typed "Screen Capture Software" into google and I got heaps of results as one might expect. I browsed through the first 6 pages and could not find a link for Digeus Software. If my suspicions are correct then if Digeus are successful in getting this link into a large number of blogs, Google's search algorithm will obligingly push them up the list. Viral marketing? Let's hope not!

"May I ask you to place the link below to our Screen Capture Software anywhere on your blog? If you agree, please send me the link where you placed the link and I will present you with a license for free.

Here is the link:
Screen Capture Software
You may place this link alone without description or on existing post or create new post with a short description (language and text is up to you)
Feel free to get information about product here: http://www.digeus.com/products/snapit/snapit_screen_capture_3_5.html
P.S. Don't change text in the link. It should be "Screen Capture Software".
Sincerely,
Katherine Poll"