Question: At NSU’s Commencement Ceremony, the deans of five different colleges are invited to sit on the stage for the ceremony. These five deans sit down in a random order unaware that the commencement planning team has assigned them seats. Right before the ceremony begins, the commencement coordinator (who knows the correct assigned order of seating) comes up to them and thanks them for all being in the correct assigned seats (which is shocking news to the deans who were unaware that there were assigned seats).
Find the probability that the five deans would randomly all seat themselves in their correct assigned seats.
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1/120
“Math Corner” is a contest that appears in each issue of The Current and is a collaboration between NSU’s Department of Mathematics | NSU Halmos College of Arts and Sciences | NSU and NSU’s Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts | Halmos College of Arts and Sciences | NSU. Contest submissions to the Math Corner question in the Current’s latest issue can be sent to jgershma@nova.edu up until the date the next issue is published. Prizes are awarded at the end of the academic year.
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