During World War II it was necessary to administer blood tests to large numbers of recruits. There are two standard ways to administer a blood test to N people. In method 1, each person is tested separately. In method 2, the blood samples of x people are pooled and tested as one large sample. If the test is negative, this one test is enough for all x people. If the test is positive, then each of the x people is tested separately, requiring a total of x + 1 tests. Using the second method and some probability theory it can be shown that, on the average, the total number of tests y will be

With q = 0.99 and N = 1000, find the integer value of x that minimizes y. Also find the integer value of x that maximizes y. (This second result is not important to the real-life situation.) The group testing method was used in World War II with a savings of 80% over the individual testing method, but not with the given value of q.

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y = N( 1 − q² + 1).