Lucy's school is celebrating easter by having a race in which the winner will get a basket of chocolate eggs. lucy is the fiftieth slowest runner in the school. assuming no two runners are the same speed, how many runners are in lucy's school?

Question

Sammy Hurst

Mathematics

19 September, 08:16

Lucy's school is celebrating easter by having a race in which the winner will get a basket of chocolate eggs. lucy is the fiftieth slowest runner in the school. assuming no two runners are the same speed, how many runners are in lucy's school?

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Cindy Hurley · Answer 1

The question also states that Lucy has a winning probability of 1/50, which means that she has 1 chance of winning if the total runners were 50. Therefore, there are 49 runners who may be faster than her.

The fact that Lucy is the 50th slowest runner, means that starting from the slowest she is in 50th position, therefore there are 49 runners that are slower than her.

The total number of runners will be the sum of those faster than Lucy, those slower than Lucy and Lucy:

49 + 49 + 1 = 99

There are 99 runners in Lucy's school.