On: Stupid Programmer Tricks and Star Wars GIFs

[jlgreco]

Assuming a random distribution of quotes from the twitter stream, and assuming there isn't any control on repeats, how long can we expect to be able to recreate the movies (well, the portions with dialog) in gif form?

[psuter → jlgreco]

That would be the Coupon collector's problem [1]. Roughly, you should expect to go through O(n log n) quotes before you have seen them all.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem

[jlgreco → psuter]

Awesome link, thanks! I love learning when stuff like this has a name.