L' Eomot Inversé (12/2/2011)

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Excellent question. A good one for Friday - nice and easy.

I don't understand why so many people (184 out of 370 so far) got it wrong.

It must seem blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever had to pack a collection of variously sized objects into a set of equally sized boxes that you can't tell the number of boxes needed from the average object size - and that isn't all that rare a domestic task. When packing to move house (or even for a family holiday) shuffling things between packing crates (or between suitcases) in order to fit more things in is surely a common experience?

People who work with databases should of course know how to do worst case estimates on storage occupancy, so even if they haven't had domestic experience of putting vaious sized pakages into a uniform set of tubs they ought to get this one right. Although it maybe doesn't matter too much - the spread from best case via average case to worst case isn't all that enormous for the criteria given in the problem (unless my mental arithmetic is playing tricks on me).