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Probability of Grade A or B
Source: Homepage of Tejaswi Navilarekallu, Post Doctoral Fellow, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
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Solution:
The solution discussed in a problem before at http://pratikpoddarcse.blogspot.com/2009/10/ndyour-number.html
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A professor decides the following grading scheme in his class. After the nal exam is graded, he
keeps all the papers upside down on his table in a random order so that no student can
recognize his own paper. Each student during his turn can overturn at most n/2 of these papers
(where n is the total number of students in the class) and guess whether he received an A or a B
on the nal (there are only two grades given). Obviously the student doesn't know which paper
is his, so it is not guaranteed that he will nd his own score by looking at n/2 scores. The papers
are then turned back and kept in the original order. The students cannot pass any information to
others. All the students pass the course if "everyone" guesses their grade correctly, and they fail
otherwise. Come up with a strategy that the students can decide on beforehand, so that the
probability that they all will pass is more than a positive constant independent of n.
Baseball Party
Math Olympiad Problem : Overlapping Coins
Senators and Graph Theory
Equal Heads and Tail
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Hint: Answer is n
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Source: Asked to me by Sudeep Kamath (Third year PhD Student, UC at Berkeley, EE IITB
Alumnus)
Problem: A box contains n balls coloured 1 to n. Each time you pick two balls from the bin - the
rst ball and the second ball, both uniformly at random and you paint the second ball with the
colour of the rst. Then, you put both balls back into the box. What is the expected number of
times this needs to be done so that all balls in the box have the same colour?
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Problem: There are 51 senators in a senate. The senate needs to be divided into n committees
such that each senator is on exactly one committee. Each senator hates exactly three other
senators. (If senator A hates senator B, then senator B does 'not' necessarily hate senator A.)
Find the smallest n such that it is always possible to arrange the committees so that no senator
hates another senator on his or her committee.
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Coin Balancing
Popular Posts
Problem: Among 10 given coins, some may be real and some may be fake. All real coins weigh
the same. All fake coins weigh the same, but have a dierent weight than real coins. Can you
prove or disprove that all ten coins weigh the same in three weighings on a balance scale?
BTW, List of previously asked Coin related puzzles on the blog:
Russian Coins
Coin Weighing Problem
Another Coin Problem
Coins Puzzle
Consecutive Heads
Five Thieves and Bounty
Sphagetti Breakfast
Math Game of Zero String
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consists of one soldier jumping over an adjacent soldier into an empty cell, vertically or
horizontally (but not diagonally), and removing the soldier which was jumped over. The goal of
the puzzle is to place a soldier as far above the horizontal line as possible.
Prove that there is no nite series of moves that will allow a soldier to advance more than four
rows above the horizontal line.
I could get the correct direction in 5 min. Spent enough time on the problem but could not solve
it. :( Give it a go! \m/
Update: Sep 07, 2010
Solution: Posted by Siddhant Agarwal (Senior Undergraduate, Elec IITB) in comments!!
10 comments:
Button A Choose a number i from 1 to 5 and then take one token from box i and magically two
tokens will be added to box i + 1.
Button B Choose a number i from 1 to 4 and then take one token from box i and then the
contents of boxes i + 1 and i + 2 will be interchanged.
The machine sells for one trillion dollars. The contract says that you can take the machine back
to the bank at any time and then the bank will give you one dollar for each token in the
machine. Is the machine worth buying?
Update (Nov 10, 2010):
This problem is an IMO 2010 Problem. Solution available at artofproblemsolving link
Solution posted by Siddhant Agarwal (EE Senior Undergraduate, IIT Bombay) who gave credits to
Naval Chopra (CSE Senior Undergraduate, IIT Bombay) in comments!
8 comments:
Coin conundrum
Source: Australian Mathematical Society Gazette Puzzle Corner
Problem: There are coins of various sizes on a table, with some touching others. As often as you
wish, you may choose a coin, then turn it over, along with every other coin that it touches. If all
coins start out showing heads, is it always possible to change them to all tails using these
moves?
Update (Nov 15, 2010):
Solution: Solution from the gazette author posted by me in comments! Interesting linear
algebra solution posted by Siddhant Agarwal (EE, Senior Undergraduate, IITB) in comments!
5 comments:
Diering views
Source: Australian Mathematical Society Gazette Puzzle Corner
Problem: An optimist and a pessimist are examining a sequence of numbers. The optimist
remarks, Oh jolly! The sum of any eight consecutive terms is positive! But the pessimist
interjects, Not so fast, the sum of any ve consecutive terms is negative. Can they both be
right? How long can this sequence of numbers be?
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5 comments:
Cube in a sphere
Source: CMU Spring 2010 Course on Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science
Problem: 10% of the surface of a sphere is colored green, and the rest is colored blue. Show
that no matter how the colors are arranged, it is possible to inscribe a cube in the sphere so that
all of its vertices are blue.
Hint: Use probabilistic analysis. Consider a random cube and calculate the expected number of
vertices that are blue.
(Update 23/06/10):
Solution: Posted by connect2ppl - Giridhar Addepalli (CSE, IITK alumnus and Yahoo! Sr. Software
Engineer) in comments!
6 comments:
1 comment:
May 7, 2010
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"non-intuitive". Try it again. Its very interesting and trying to solve it gives u a kick :P
5 comments:
8 comments:
40 comments:
Mar 4, 2010
Trac Jam
You have N cars that are all traveling the same direction on an innitely long one-lane highway.
Unfortunately, they are all going dierent speeds, and cannot pass each other. Eventually the
cars will clump up in one or more trac jams. In terms of N, what is the expected number of
clumps of cars?
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Update (05/03/2010):
Solution: Posted by me in comments!! Thanx to Asad (EE, IITB Alumnus) and Siddhant Agarwal
(EE, IITB 3rd year student) for their participation in discussion in comments!!
Update (29/01/2011)
Very simple and clear solution posted by wonderwice in comments! Thanks a ton!
10 comments:
Mar 2, 2010
Perfect Powers
Source: Appeared in 1977 High School Programming Contest. Taken
from http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/cs.shtml
Problem:
n
Write a fast program that prints perfect powers (integers of the form m , with m,n>1) in
increasing numerical order.
So the rst few outputs should be 4, 8, 9, 16, 25, 27, 32, ...
Find an algorithm that prints all perfect powers less than equal to N.
Update (05/03/2010):
Solution:
Nikhil Garg (CSE, IITD Sophomore) posted a solution which takes O(N) space and O(log N*sqrt N)
time. Printing takes time O(N) though.
I posted a solution which takes O((sqrt N)*(log N)) space and O((sqrt N)*(log N)*(log N)) time.
Rajendran Thirupugalsamy (Research Assistant, Stony Brook University) posted a solution which
takes O(log(N)) space and O(sqrt N * log N * log(log(N))) time. {Analysis done by Ramdas}
Aaditya Ramdas (CSE IITB Alumnus and working at Tower Research Capital) posted a solution
which takes O(sqrt N) space and O((sqrt N)*(log N)*(log N)) time.
Interesting discussion and all solutions in comments!!
17 comments:
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Consecutive Heads
Five Thieves and Bounty
Update (18/02/10): Solution posted by me in comments!! A non-optimal but simpler solution
posted by Bhanu (M.Tech Student, CSE, IITB). Another solution posted by Suman in comments!!
Thanx
6 comments:
Feb 9, 2010
Checkers Problem
Source: Nikhil Garg (Sophomore, IITD) mailed them to me.
Problem 1:
A checker starts at point (1,1). You can move checker using following moves :
1) if it is at (x,y) take it to (2x ,y ) or (x,2y)
2) if it is at (x,y) & x>y take it to (x-y,y)
3) if it is at (x,y) & x<y take it to (x,y-x)
Characterise all lattice points which can be reached.
Problem 2:
You have a checker at (0,0) , (0,1) , (1,0), (2,0), (0,2), (1,1) each. You can make a move as
follows:
if(x,y) is lled & (x+1,y) and (x,y+1) both are empty, remove checker from (x,y) & put one at
each of (x+1,y) and (x,y+1)
Prove that under this move , you can not remove checker from all the six initial points.
Solution:
Update (02/03/10): Solution posted by Nikhil Garg in comments!
2 comments:
10 comments:
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I have read and solved many problems like these. Can people post some similar interesting problems using gates. I was asked one such
question in my Deutsche Bank Interview which I was not able to answer.
Update(09/02/10):
Solution: Solution posted by Sid in comments!!
11 comments:
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"CSE Blog - Quant, Math & Computer Science Puzzles for Interview
Preparation & Brain Teasing" is a collection of ~225 Puzzles with Solutions.
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