There are 2016 passengers about to board a plane, numbered 1 through 2016 in that order. Each passenger is assigned to a seat equal to his or her own number. However, the first passenger disregards instructions and instead of sitting in seat number 1, chooses and sits down in a randomly chosen seat. Each subsequent passenger acts according to the following scheme: if their assigned seat is available, they will sit there; otherwise, they will pick at random from the remaining available seats and sit there. What is the probability that the 1512th passenger ends up sitting in their assigned seat? A. 1/2016 B. 1/2 C. 5/8 D. 3/4 E. None of the above

Operations Research : Applications and Algorithms
4th Edition
ISBN:9780534380588
Author:Wayne L. Winston
Publisher:Wayne L. Winston
Chapter19: Probabilistic Dynamic Programming
Section19.4: Further Examples Of Probabilistic Dynamic Programming Formulations
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There are 2016 passengers about to board a plane, numbered 1 through 2016 in that order. Each passenger is assigned to a seat equal to his or her own number. However, the first passenger disregards instructions and instead of sitting in seat number 1, chooses and sits down in a randomly chosen seat. Each subsequent passenger acts according to the following scheme: if their assigned seat is available, they will sit there; otherwise, they will pick at random from the remaining available seats and sit there. What is the probability that the 1512th passenger ends up sitting in their assigned seat?

A. 1/2016

B. 1/2

C. 5/8

D. 3/4

E. None of the above 

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