math puzzles

Okay, making as much fun of my lack of math comprehension as you choose, can anyone explain the probability of the birthday paradox in terms that someone who's math-challenged can understand. Forget Wiki. I have a hangover and it's far too thick(or I am).

Hi, I have a bit of a maths problem. I am drawing some triangles to screen with my program but my program draws to a paintbox (.net). The left most coordinate of the paintbox is 0, the rightmost is 500. It's 500 pixels wide by 500 pixels high. On this box I have drawn axis and a grid labelled...

I figure this must be the right place to post a math problem I came across: $${x}={\sqrt{7 + \sqrt{7 + \sqrt{7 + ... }}}}$$ I took a stab at the problem, but I can't be doing it right. The approach I took was: $${x^2}={7 + \sqrt{7 + \sqrt{7 + \sqrt{7 + ... }}}}$$ $${x^2 = 7 + x}$$ $${x^2 - x...

Given a bounding box of a shape, I can calculate the width and height of the bounding box after the object has been rotated with the following formulas: New Height = H * cos(angle) + W * sin(angle) New Width = H * sin(angle) + W * cos(angle)Where H and W are the original height and width of...

There are a group of people that know a secret. The probability that any one person leaks the secret is 0.03. a) If there are 2 people in the group, what is probability that someone leaks the secret? What if there are 5 people in the group? b) How many people in the group do you need to...

Not sure what kind of math to do for this, so if anyone can give me a ballpark answer or any tips on how to figure it out that would be much appreciated! I want to know how many descendants an immortal person would have if they sired an average of one child every 30 years for 1000 years. The...

I was watching a travel show the other night -- they were in Korea, and a group of people were playing a drinking game. The way it worked was, one person was "it". This person says something like, "ready, set..." then points at one other player and calls out a number (call it x) between 2 and...

I have been thinking about this one for a while now: On Deal or No Deal, if a contestant gets down to two cases and the top prize is still on the board, what is the probability that the case he or she holds contains the top prize? My first thought was to relate this to the Monty Hall puzzle...

So, I was reading about this guy Alexander Diem who set a skydiving speed record of 313mph. But nowhere did it tell me how long he spent in freefall. I calculated as follows. 313mph *5280 = 1,652,640 feet per hour /60, /60 = 459.0667 feet per second So, I hear that falling bodies...

I am hoping that someone in this sub-forum can help me out with a math conversion/calculation question. If I want to estimate how many round objects are in a 2 cubic foot square container, what is the best way to do this? In this example, let's say the objects are four inches in diameter...

3 friends check into a hotel the room rate is 30 dollars so each of the friends pays 10 dollars each. after they have gone up to thier room the manager realizes the room is actually 25 dollars and she has over charged the 3 friends so she sends a bellboy up to thier room with a 5 dollar refund...