Fencepost Mistake
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Common Mistake
Let $F$ be a fence of length $n$ units, with fenceposts at either end and spaced $1$ unit apart.
How many fenceposts are there?
To answer $n$ is to make the fencepost mistake.
There are $n + 1$ fenceposts.
Also known as
This is usually seen as fencepost error, but $\mathsf{Pr} \infty \mathsf{fWiki}$ prefers to reserve the word error for its context in unavoidable inaccuracies in measurement.
Also see
- Results about fencepost mistakes can be found here.