You are blindfolded and 10 coins are place in front of you on table. You are allowed to touch the coins, but can't tell which way up they are by feel. You are told that there are 5 coins head up, and 5 coins tails up but not which ones are which.
How do you make two piles of coins each with the same number of heads up?
You can flip the coins any number of times.
Make 2 piles with equal number of coins. Now, flip all the coins in one of the pile.
How this will work? lets take an example.
So initially there are 5 heads, so suppose you divide it in 2 piles.
Case:
P1 : H H T T T
P2 : H H H T T
Now when P1 will be flipped
P1 : T T H H H
P1(Heads) = P2(Heads)
Another case:
P1 : H T T T T
P2 : H H H H T
Now when P1 will be flipped
P1 : H H H H T
P1(Heads) = P2(Heads)
Four jolly men sat down to play,
and played all night till break of day.
They played for gold and not for fun,
with separate scores for every one.
Yet when they came to square accounts,
they all had made quite fair amounts!
Can you the paradox explain?
If no one lost, how could all gain?
Two fathers and two sons went fishing one day. They were there the whole day and only caught 3 fish. One father said, that is enough for all of us, we will have one each. How can this be possible?
There was the father, his son, and his son's son. This equals 2 fathers and 2 sons for a total of 3!
It was a Pink Island. There were 201 individuals (perfect logicians) lived in the island. Among them 100 people were blue eyed people, 100 were green eyed people and the leader was a black eyed one.
Except the leader, nobody knew how many individuals lived in the island. Neither have they known about the color of the eyes. The leader was a very strict person. Those people can never communicate with others. They even cannot make gestures to communicate. They can only talk and communicate with the leader. It was a prison for those 200 individuals.
However, the leader provided an opportunity to leave the island forever but on one condition. Every morning he questions the individuals about the color of the eyes! If any of the individuals say the right color, he would be released. Since they were unaware about the color of the eyes, all 200 individuals remained silent. When they say wrong color, they were eaten alive to death. Afraid of punishment, they remained silent.
One day, the leader announced that "at least 1 of you has green eyes! If you say you are the one, come and say, I will let you go if you are correct! But only one of you can come and tell me!"
How many green eyed individuals leave the island and in how many days?
All 100 green eyed individuals will leave on the 100th night.
Consider, there is only one green eyed individual lived in the island. He will look at all the remaining individuals who have blue eyes. So, he can get assured that he has green eyes!
Now consider 2 people with green eyes. Only reason the other green-eyed person wouldn't leave on the first night is because he sees another person with green eyes. Seeing no one else with green eyes, each of these two people realize it must be them. So both leaves on second night.
This is the same for any number. Five people with green eyes would leave on the fifth night and 100 on the 100th, all at once.
Search: Monty Hall problem
Why it's important for the solution that the leader said the new information "at least 1 of you has green eyes", when they must knew from the beginning, that there are no less than 99 green-eyed people on the island? Because they cannot depart the island without being certain, they cannot begin the process of leaving until the guru speaks, and common knowledge is attained.
Search: Common knowledge (logic)
Two sentries were on duty outside a barracks.
One faced up the road to watch for anyone approaching from the North.
The other looked down the road to see if anyone was approached from the South.
Suddenly one of them said to the other, "Why are you smiling?"
How did he know that his companion was smiling?
Although the guards were looking in opposite directions, they were not back to back. They were facing each other.