Consider a lottery where six numbers are chosen randomly from {1, 2, ..., M}. What is the largest value of M so that it is more likely than not that the chosen set has two consecutive integers?
Notes: You may have noticed this consecutive-number phenomenon in the winning 6-tuples of real lotteries. The numbers are chosen without replacement; they are presented in sorted order (i.e., order is irrelevant).
Source: David Berman, College Math. Journal, Jan 1994.
© Copyright 2001 Stan Wagon. Reproduced with
permission.