It's funny that Labour's 'Every little hurts' slogan from the 2011 election is doing the rounds again because if they'd been referring to World Cup Panini stickers they'd be completely right.
Swiss mathematicians have calculated that it actually takes around UK£450 to complete. They estimate that, on average, it will take you 899 packs of Panini stickers to fill your album due to the amount of duplicates found.
Turns out we probably saved our parents a shit load of cash by swapping stickers on the bus to school every day.
Andrew Palmer from The Economist went on BBC Radio 5 Live to discuss the findings and statistical technique used by the mathematicians:
It's a statistical technique called the Coupon Collector's Problem. I won't go into the maths part because I don't understand it but the idea is basically that if you as an individual just bought pack after pack after pack and didn't do any swapping how long would it take you to fill your album.
Of course the probability of getting the card that you need goes down the more slots that you fill in the album.
hat-tip: Daily Mail
