Hillis Quotes
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What horrified Hillis, unlike many a college undergraduate, wasn’t his roommate’s hygiene. It wasn’t that the roommate didn’t wash the socks; he did. The problem was what came next. The roommate pulled a sock out of the clean laundry hamper. Next he pulled another sock out at random. If it didn’t match the first one, he tossed it back in. Then he continued this process, pulling out socks one by one and tossing them back until he found a match for the first. With just 10 different pairs of socks, following this method will take on average 19 pulls merely to complete the first pair, and 17 more pulls to complete the second. In total, the roommate can expect to go fishing in the hamper 110 times just to pair 20 socks. It was enough to make any budding computer scientist request a room transfer.
