Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 322 1 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For the three unordered evolved pairs, conditional independence gives the slice probabilities , and . Averaging over the shared age in the coeval binary population yieldsThus their system-number ratio is , as required.
For the unheaded instantaneous-burst continuation, put , with . All binary stars now have the same age, so the individual red giant fraction is . Independent component masses give the giant-pair fraction in an instantaneous stellar burst, the two-giant system fractionThe final comparison has an ambiguity about which population is being counted. Taken literally as a comparison with the first galaxy's individual-star giant fraction , it would require . There is no allowed burst age: throughout , the two-giant fraction is less than , well below .
If the intended comparison instead concerns two-giant systems in both galaxies, the comparison fraction is . Then givesFor completeness, a comparison of individual red giant fractions in both galaxies would give . These three comparisons have different denominators and should not be conflated.