Donald Trump’s 'Covfefe' makes it to Kolkata institute's question paper

NEW DELHI: US President Donald Trump's cryptic tweet of a non-existent word -- "Covfefe" -- sparked a flood of humor and ridicule on the internet earlier this year. The word doesn't exist in English, or apparently any human language. The Regent's English Language Center in London had said: "We can confirm that 'covfefe' is not an English word. Yet." Newsweek had declared it the "word of the year -- or century." After about six months, the Covfefe reappeared in a question paper in one India’s most premier institutes, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Indian Statistical Institute in Martingale Theory paper framed a question which says: "Mr Trump decides to post a random message on Facebook and he starts typing random sequence of letters {Uk}k≥1 such that they are chosen independently and uniformly from the 26 possible English alphabets. Find out the expected time of the first appearance of the word COVFEFE." Twitter user Grieve Chelwa has shared the picture of the paper and it has received over 11,000 retweets and more than 16,000 'likes'.

LOL. Today's exam at the Indian Statistical Institute. See Qn 5. pic.twitter.com/TrHHpyGCCP

— Grieve Chelwa (@gchelwa) December 1, 2017

Here's how Twitter reacted to it:

Expected length of gibberish ending with COVFEFE — #DestroyTheAadhaar #BanEvms (@abdullahanam) December 2, 2017

I can't get it. Is there any way I can report it as offensive to my intellect? 😛😛😛 If you have time, please lemme know how the denominator 1/ 26^7 is derived?? 🙏🙏

— Prince Zuko (@sriharshakb) December 3, 2017

I didn't know English has more than one alphabet, let alone 26 of them. — Snarky Cyclist (@SnarkyCyclistAB) December 2, 2017

Haha, it’s a good question though. Probability joins Politics ;)

— Barsha Panda (@BarshaPanda) December 3, 2017

😂 😂 As a fan of statistics and econometrics, couldn’t stop laughing... — Alkanes (@bullish_trader) December 2, 2017

All credit goes to Professor Rajat Subhra Hazra of ISI Kolkata. We did nothing in this :)

— Kaabira. (@KaabiraSpeaking) December 3, 2017