I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts and I would like also to answer some issues you've raised. Firstly, even if the lead is harshly disputed and even if the boats are nearly similar, the boats are sufficiently away from each other at the finish line that it is easy to say who's the winner. Thus a tie is impossible. Secondly, the order in the distribution of points is not taken into account. As you intuited, "210", "201", "120", "102", "021", "012" means merely that "of three boats, one of them one twice, another one won once, and the third lost all three races". I am still looking for a way to guess the number of patterns, rather than the indivual outcomes from a given number of races or trials.
Tanguy Arzel . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
