Re: Grocery Shopping, buy 3 items @ 2 stores

well, how many items are there in a typical grocery store, and a 2nd
hand shop, or a subset say a 1/4 of the items, (likely to buy), lets
say there were 500 possible items in each store.
how many 3 item combinations would there be for 500 x 2 stores, as to
pricing of course i don't have that data

so no 'ballpark' guess as to how probable ?




On May 20, 7:08 pm, "Phil Holman" <piholmanc@yourservice> wrote:
"Joe Mexico" <fm200...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1179714175.077740.75330@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> the total from the 2 purchases, both times is $9.92
what are the general odds of this happening back to back in one day
where no other shopping was done please
thanks in advance

Let's rephrase the question and then run through an example solution.
Given that I will purchase three needed items from one store and then
another three needed items from another store, what is the probability
that the purchase price at each store will be $9.92?

Say there are possibly 50 items that I could purchase from each store
with equal probability. This means there are 19600 possible 3 items
combinations from each store. Say out of those 19600 combinations, only
100 of them could sum to $9.92. The probability will therefore be:

p = (100/19600)^2 = .000026

To apply this solution to your actual experience, you would have to
estimate the number of possible items you are likely to buy, calculate
the number of 3 item combinations and from that, the number of 3 item
combinations that sum to $9.92.

Phil H


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