I didn't need to attempt to work out the integral version of the summation I'd found that represented the number of times at least one 1 would appear when rolling an n-sided die n times. Instead, there is a direct answer, right in one of the tables I'd shown, for what my summation becomes. Specifically, I noticed that there was a pattern to the differences between the numerator and denominator values that represented the odds for each listed n. Following up on it this time, I noticed that the difference was (n-1)^n. Thus, the numerator would be the denominator minus the difference, aka: n^n - (n-1)^n Which, when divided by the denominator (n^n) yields the familiar formula for the situation at hand. ![showing the numerator and denominator differences](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/slowerthanlightspeed/reddit_images/master/tetrations%20connection%20solved.png) (side note, Wolfram Alpha verified for me that the summation becomes n^n - (n-1)^n) The summation: ![The Summation](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/slowerthanlightspeed/slowerthanlightspeed.github.io/master/reddit_images/sum_for_probability.png) Becomes the numerator in the following fraction: ![Odds Fraction](https://github.com/slowerthanlightspeed/reddit_images/blob/master/last%20major%20step%20between%20quick%20solution%20from%20tetrations.png?raw=true) And the fraction simplifies to the most common form of the answer: ![common solution format](https://github.com/slowerthanlightspeed/reddit_images/blob/master/most_common_form_solution.png?raw=true) Now I can sleep.