olymmath

HMMT November 2019 U26

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Dan is walking down the left side of a street in New York City and must cross to the right side at one of 10 crosswalks he will pass. Each time he arrives at a crosswalk, however, he must wait tt seconds, where tt is selected uniformly at random from the real interval [0,60][0,60] ( tt can be different at different crosswalks). Because the wait time is conveniently displayed on the signal across the street, Dan employs the following strategy: if the wait time when he arrives at the crosswalk is no more than kk seconds, he crosses. Otherwise, he immediately moves on to the next crosswalk. If he arrives at the last crosswalk and has not crossed yet, then he crosses regardless of the wait time. Find the value of kk which minimizes his expected wait time.

Dataset text NuminaMath olympiads. Quoted with source.

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60\left(1-\left(\frac{1}{10}\right)^{\frac{1}{9}}\right)

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