Testwiki:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2008 April 1

{| width = "100%"

|- ! colspan="3" align="center" | Mathematics desk |- ! width="20%" align="left" | < March 31 ! width="25%" align="center"|<< Mar | April | May >> ! width="20%" align="right" |Current desk > |}

Welcome to the Wikipedia Mathematics Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 1

Socks

You have a basket containing a mix of short socks and long socks. How many socks do you need to pull out to be certain of having a matching pair? --67.185.172.158 (talk) 05:24, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Pulling out three socks would be enough!A Real Kaiser (talk) 07:10, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

If you like long words, see pigeonhole principle. --Tango (talk) 09:00, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, assuming there are only short and long socks, and that all short and long socks are identical, and that there is no difference between left and right sock... -mattbuck (Talk) 01:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

This reminds me of a similair question but with gloves instead of socks. Then is a matched two gloves of the same hand? Or a pair of one of each left and right? Mensa had this in a test and the answer was the probability for pullign out two identical, not one of each left and right....--Dacium (talk) 02:11, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

If you have n feet and c different kinds of socks, you'll need to pull out $(n-1)c+1$ socks. :) George (talk) 01:47, 6 April 2008 (UTC)