I'm nearly finished writing a novel, doing revisions now.
There's a part in the story where an intelligent character of mine tries to do something, but I have no clue what the mathematical odds of it happening are.
Essentially:
>Antagonist knows 108 different poses he can assume
>He must strike each pose in consecutive order to obtain enlightenment
>However, each pose has a unique position in the "chain" that must be filled at that particular place. I.E. Pose "A" must be 5th, Pose "B" 87th, etc.
>There is no penalty for starting again or getting the answer correct
I want him to accurately ballpark how many attempts it will take him to achieve the correct string of movements through pure guesswork. Assume that each attempt is unique
>How many attempts on average would it take to get right?
>What's the probability of getting it right in one go?
>If each attempt takes 20 seconds how long will it take him to get it right if he winds up succeeding on his 102nd attempt?