Math Is Fun Forum

TheTick

Member

Registered: 2012-12-03

Posts: 27

Origami probabilty problem

Say you have identical sheets of paper, and you take one sheet and make a random crease in that sheet of paper, what is the probability that if someone else folds a random crease in one of the other sheets that it will be the exact same crease. I figured it would be 1/infinity, but what If the second person was allowed to make 5 random creases in the second sheet what would the probability that 1 of those creases was identical to the original crease... 5/infinity?

If so what is the difference between 1/infinity and 5/infinity?

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Bob

Administrator

Registered: 2010-06-20

Posts: 10,621

Re: Origami probabilty problem

In practice, creases are not infinitely thin so I think the probabliity is not 1/∞, but rather some very small fraction that depends on the paper etc.

But if you were right about the 1/∞ and 5/∞ , these are both zero.

(There have been many arguments about infinity related topics on MathIsFun, so you may have accidentally set them off again.) 

Bob

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anonimnystefy

Real Member

From: Harlan's World

Registered: 2011-05-23

Posts: 16,049

Re: Origami probabilty problem

Yes, both probabilities are zero.

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