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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)[reply]

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

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]