Meta · Probability & Brainteasers
Derive expected meetings given nonempty room
TrueInterview
October 7, 2026 · 1 min read
We have rooms, numbered through , and meetings. Every meeting independently selects one of the rooms with equal probability. Let denote the count of meetings assigned to Room 1. Condition on the event . (a) Find a closed-form expression for in terms of and . (b) Find . (c) Briefly describe your method, for example using Bayes' rule or conditioning identities.
Overview: This question tests a candidate's grasp of conditional probability, zero-truncated binomial distributions, and computing conditional expectation and variance in finite-sample random assignment contexts.
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