tomachello
Re:Ask HN: What's your favorite math/logic puzzle?
on Tuesday August 02, 2022 @11:00AM (#32319386)
They just need one prisoner to guess correctly - then they all win.
Regarding the base case scenario - if each prisoner guesses randomly, each has a 1/100 chance of guessing correctly, and hence they have an expected number of exactly one correct guess. So no deterministic approach can give 2 correct guesses, since no prisoner actually has any real information about their number.
Re:Ask HN: What's your favorite math/logic puzzle?
on Tuesday August 02, 2022 @07:03AM (#32317174)
No, only one. Think about it this way - if the warden randomly generates their numbers, each prisoner has a 1/100 chance of guessing it right. So best case scenario is exactly one gets it right, which is actually possible.
Ask HN: What's your favorite math/logic puzzle?
I personally am a fan of "hat" problems, such as the following: there are 100 inmates in a prison. Tomorrow the warden will assign each a number, from 1 to 100, that will be written on their hat. The numbers won't necessarily be different, and each prisoner will be able to see the numbers of all the other prisoners, but not their own number. The warden will free all the prisoners if one of them...