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Why does Solve work on a sum with 34 terms but not 35 terms?

Posted 8 years ago

Why does this work when M=34 but not when M=35?:

Clear [n, M, confidence, k, p]; n = 8; M = 34; confidence = 0.5;

$ \text{Solve}\left[\sum _{k=n+1}^M \frac{M! p^k (1-p)^{M-k}}{(M-k)! k!}=\text{confidence},p,\mathbb{R}\right] $

POSTED BY: Michael H.
2 Replies
Posted 8 years ago

Thanks!!

POSTED BY: Michael H.

This code works on my system:

With[{M = 35, n = 8, c = 1/2}, 
 Solve[Sum[(M! p^k (1 - p^(M - k)))/((M - k)! k!), {k, n + 1, M}] == 
   c, p, Reals]]
POSTED BY: Gianluca Gorni
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