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A probabilistic way to discover the rainbow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2022

Joscha Prochno  and
Michael Schmitz
Joscha Prochno
Affiliation:
Faculty of Computer, Science and Mathematics, University of Passau, Innstrasse 33, 94032 Passau, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
Michael Schmitz
Affiliation:
University of Flensburg, Auf dem Campus 1, 24943 Flensburg, Germany, e-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

A slogan that you find on the back of a pack of Skittles candy says ‘No two rainbows are the same. Neither are two packs of Skittles. Enjoy an odd mix.’ An online blog [1] describes how the blogger found two identical packs of Skittles, among 468 packs with a total of 27,740 Skittles. Meticulously collecting the data for this experiment was apparently triggered by some earlier calculations. More precisely, the blogger writes:

Type
Articles
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 106 , Issue 565 , March 2022 , pp. 103 - 115
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Copyright
© The Authors, 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Mathematical Association

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References

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