Question

A chain letter starts when a person sends a letter to 5 others. Each person who receives the letter either sends it to five other people who have never received it or does not send it to anyone. Suppose that 10,000 people send out the letter before the chain ends and that no one receives more than 1 letter.
How many people receive the letter? How many do not send it out?
Please, help

Answer 1

I'm on it
It looks to me like a geometric series.
what math class is this from?

Answer 2

discrete, tree part.

Answer 3

graph.

Answer 4

so something in college then.

Answer 5

yeap

Answer 6

any idea?

Answer 7

do you know for sure that there will be only one possible answer?
it looks to me like there will be an upper and lower range.

Answer 8

To the graph theory, there is not only one possible answer, but all of them are isomorphic

Answer 9

I mean, they are the same.

Answer 10

ok, so then you can make the assumption that as each person sends out 5 copies of the letter, 4 are rejected and 1 is accepted

Answer 11

then?

Answer 12

then when the 10000th person sends the letter all 5 copies are rejected

Answer 13

don't get.

Answer 14

ok, see my idea, 10,000 senders, it means 50,000 receivers?

Answer 15

and then the last time, after 10000 people have received it, 5 people reject it

Answer 16

hold on, how can you know exactly 4 people don 't send? what if 3/5 send the letter? we cannot assume that, right?

Answer 17

@Peter14 the original problem said that 10,000 senders, not receivers

Answer 18

yes, I know.

Answer 19

my terminology was a bit confused. I used "reject" instead of "not pass along" and "accept" instead of "pass along"

Answer 20

Attached is a similar problem and solution.
Do not look if you do not want to know. :)

http://tinyurl.com/c7unh3j

Answer 21

@Directrix so funny, I ask for help and you tell me don't look if....
anyway, thanks,

Answer 22

@Peter14 it is exactly mine.

Answer 23

Thanks a lot, friends.

Answer 24

Cool introduction to trees at this link, I think. Check out the Bernoulli family tree.
http://tinyurl.com/c7unh3j

Answer 25

@Directrix , can you give me the link or explanation for the word problem like: "Construct a binary search tree for the words "Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary"
I searched and searched, then researched. ... no answer.

Answer 26

@Hoa

See page 15.

http://tinyurl.com/cwrubxv

I'm still looking for a tree.

Answer 27

@Hoa

Getting closer - I think you'll have to read this entire document about the tuple tree. Check out these attachments for incentive.

Answer 28

Tuple Tree Link: http://tinyurl.com/cvzse9v