Ken's blog

One Sunday evening in River City, CNXY was in the process of televising a mayoral candidate debate with ten aspirants so they could practice their persuasive oratory on voters to gain their votes.

A random method was employed to program the speaker sequence, but it had been secretly pre-arranged by concerned citizens that Barnard S. Fagg would speak before Sheldon M. Weeder.

However, since Corby, the programmer of the random method, was somewhat inexperienced, he couldn’t guarantee whether Barnard S. Fagg would speak immediately before Sheldon M. Weeder, or there would be an interval of several speakers after Barnard S. Fagg.

Sheldon M. Weeder’s campaign manager considered it vital that Weeder should speak immediately after Barnard S. Fagg so that the plethora of flowery utopian statements expounded by Barnard S. Fagg could be disproved and ridiculed – a task which Sheldon M. Weeder was an expert at accomplishing.

At the CNXY television station, the mayoral candidates were then placed in seats around a table on the platform in the programmed order, and were all preparing to ply their persuasive abilities on the TV public so as to secure their votes in the coming mayoral election.

What would you say was the probability that Barnard S. Fagg would speak immediately before Sheldon M. Weeder so the latter could accomplish his task?