Question

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?

Answer 1

Question : 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,and Lucy would win the game probably 1/50 times. how many runners are in Lucy’s school?

Given that,Lucy is the 50th slowest runner .

From the bottom of the runners, Lucy is at the 50th position.

Also, Given that Lucy wins at a probability of 1/50 , So

Sample space of Winners = 50 .
Chance of winning = 1 ( Favourable outcomes )

We can guess that there are 49 runners before Lucy, and she would win only if 49 runners lose. That means, She would win only 1/50 th times.

Out of the fifty members, she would win once with a possibility as per the question.

There are 49 runners before Lucy and 49 after her.

Total runners = 49 + 49 + 1 = 99 .

$\therefore$ There are 99 runners in the race .

Answer 2

Lucy is the 50th slowest runner.

That is he would be 1 of the runner assuming that there are more than 50 runners participating in the race. 

Out of the probability Lucy can either be part of the first 50 runners or the next 49 runners after him. 

Thus, this states that there were 49 runners before Lucy and 49 after him. 

This makes a total of 98 runners.

Including one Lucy who is also part of the runners.

Total number of runners would be 98 + 1 

= 99.