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Birds on a Wire - Demonstration

An explanation of the birds-on-a-wire problem is given. A number of birds randomly land on a telephone wire. If the intervals between each bird and its closest companion were painted, what would be the expected fraction of wire painted? And what proportion of the number of intervals would be painted? A simulation is shown to find the empirical answers. The number of birds can vary between 3 and 100.

Identifier: 
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/BirdsOnAWire/
Rating: 
Average: 3 (261 votes)
Creator(s): 
Wolfram MathWorld
Cataloger: 
Carolyn Cuff
Publisher: 
Wolfram Research, Inc.
Rights: 
2011 Wolfram Alpha LLC—A Wolfram Research Company