Question

A small college town is supplied electricity by a company called Fluke Energy. This company has 10 different power generators supplying electricity to the town. Power plant i fails with probability pi, independently for the different power plants (so one power plant failing does not affect the probability of another power plant failing). Assume that any one power generator produces enough power to supply the entire town. What is the probability that the town has a blackout? Here, pi are fixed numbers between 0 and 1. Your answer will be a formula in terms of the pi’s.

Answer 1