From: Jean-Julien Fleck Date: 2010-08-18T00:34:51+09:00 Subject: Re: can i do this in ruby? a simulation process 2010/8/17 Andrew Wagner : > Ah, I see your point. Very interesting indeed. Is it reasonable to guess > that it would take a very, very long time in this case? Sure. I have no time left to play with it today, but I will try it tomorrow. If I recall right, the mean distance from the origin of a 1D random walk behaves like a diffusive process: it's growing like the square root of time (with a constant factor before it). Here, there are some complications, but I would expect it to behave quite the same: if you know the average time to get a 50 people difference between the two cities, it will take 10**2 = 100 times more time to get a 500 people difference in mean. Cheers, -- JJ Fleck PCSI1 Lycée Kléber