Three ants are sitting at the three corners of an equilateral triangle. Each ant starts randomly picks a direction and starts to move along the edge of the triangle. What is the probability that none of the ants collide?
So let’s think this through. The ants can only avoid a collision if they all decide to move in the same direction (either clockwise or anti-clockwise). If the ants do not pick the same direction, there will definitely be a collision. Each ant has the option to either move clockwise or anti-clockwise. There is a one in two chance that an ant decides to pick a particular direction. Using simple probability calculations, we can determine the probability of no collision.
P(No collision) = P(All ants go in a clockwise direction) + P( All ants go in an anti-clockwise direction) = 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.5 + 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25
Six glasses are in a row. The first three are filled with milk and the last three are empty. By moving only one glass, can you arrange them so that the full and the empty glasses alternate?
Just pour full glass of milk at 2nd position in 5th glass(empty) and keep that empty glass back at 2nd position.
Then full and empty glasses are at alternate positions.
Four people need to cross a rickety bridge at night. Unfortunately, they have only one torch and the bridge is too dangerous to cross without one. The bridge is only strong enough to support two people at a time. Not all people take the same time to cross the bridge. Times for each person: 1 min, 2 mins, 7 mins and 10 mins. What is the shortest time needed for all four of them to cross the bridge?
It is 17 mins.
1 and 2 go first, then 1 comes back. Then 7 and 10 go and 2 comes back. Then 1 and 2 go again, it makes a total of 17 minutes.
An archeologist claims he found a Roman coin dated 46 B.C. in Egypt. How much should Louvre Museum pay for the coin?
Note: Roman coins can really be found in Egypt
Nothing. That coin is as phony as a three dollar bill. In 46 B.C., they wouldn't have known how many years before Christ it was.
There are ten people in a house. Everybody wants to make a hand shake with only people shorter than themselves. Assume everybody is different in height. How many hand shakes are made?
0, because a taller person wants to shake hands with a shorter person. But the shorter person doesn't want to shake hands with him.
You are visiting NYC when a man approaches you.
"Not counting bald people, I bet a hundred bucks that there are two people living in New York City with the same number of hairs on their heads," he tells you.
"I'll take that bet!" you say. You talk to the man for a minute, after which you realize you have lost the bet.
What did the man say to prove his case?
This is a classic example of the pigeonhole principle. The argument goes as follows: assume that every non-bald person in New York City has a different number of hairs on their head. Since there are about 9 million people living in NYC, let's say 8 million of them aren't bald.
So 8 million people need to have different numbers of hairs on their head. But on average, people only have about 100,000 hairs. So even if there was someone with 1 hair, someone with 2 hairs, someone with 3 hairs, and so on, all the way up to someone with 100,000 hairs, there are still 7,900,000 other people who all need different numbers of hairs on their heads, and furthermore, who all need MORE than 100,000 hairs on their head.
You can see that additionally, at least one person would need to have at least 8,000,000 hairs on their head, because there's no way to have 8,000,000 people all have different numbers of hairs between 1 and 7,999,999. But someone having 8,000,000 is an essential impossibility (as is even having 1,000,000 hairs), So there's no way this situation could be the case, where everyone has a different number of hairs. Which means that at least two people have the same number of hairs.
You can easily "tile" an 8x8 chessboard with 32 2x1 tiles, meaning that you can place these 32 tiles on the board and cover every square.
But if you take away two opposite corners from the chessboard, it becomes impossible to tile this new 62-square board.
Can you explain why tiling this board isn't possible?
Color in the chessboard, alternating with red and blue tiles. Then color all of your tiles half red and half blue. Whenever you place a tile down, you can always make it so that the red part of the tile is on a red square and the blue part of the tile is on the blue square.
Since you'll need to place 31 tiles on the board (to cover the 62 squares), you would have to be able to cover 31 red squares and 31 blue squares. But when you took away the two corners, you can see that you are taking away two red spaces, leaving 30 red squares and 32 blue squares. There is no way to cover 30 red squares and 32 blue squares with the 31 tiles, since these tiles can only cover 31 red squares and 31 blue squares, and thus, tiling this board is not possible.
You're walking down a path and come to two doors. One of the doors leads to a life of prosperity and happiness, and the other door leads to a life of misery and sorrow. You don't know which door is which.
In front of the door is ONE man. You know that this man either always lies, or always tells the truth, but you don't know which. The man knows which door is which.
You are allowed to ask the man ONE yes-or-no question to figure out which door to go through. To make things more difficult, the man is very self-centered, so you are only allowed to ask him a question about what he thinks or knows; your question cannot involve what any other person or object (real or hypothetical) might say.
What question should you ask to ensure you go through the good door?
You should ask: "If I asked you if the good door is on the left, would you say yes?"
Notice that this is subtly different than asking "Is the good door on the left?", in that you are asking him IF he would say yes to that question, not what his answer to the question would be. Thus you are asking a question about a question, and if it ends up being the liar you are talking to, this will cause him to lie about a lie and thus tell the truth. The four possible cases are:
The man is a truth-teller and the good door is on the left. He will say "yes".
The man is a truth-teller and the good door is on the right. He will say "no".
The man is a liar and the good door is on the left. He will say "yes" because if you asked him "Is the good door on the left?", he would lie and say "no", and so when you ask him if he would say "yes", he will lie and say "yes".
The man is a liar and the good door is on the right. Similar to the previous example, he'll say "no".
So regardless of whether the man is a truth-teller or a liar, this question will get a "yes" if the door on the left is the good door, and a "no" if it's not.
"Welcome back to the show. Before the break, Mr Ixolite here made it to our grand finale! How do you feel Mr.Ix?"
"Nervous."
"Okay, now to win the star prize of one million pounds all you have to do is answer the following question in 90 seconds."
"Okay, I'm ready."
"Right. In 90 seconds name 100 words that do NOT contain the letter 'A'. Start the clock!"
Can you help?
One, two, three, four, five...one hundred! I just counted from 1 to 100 in ninety seconds (it is possible).
Once upon a time there was a dad and 3 kids. When the kids were adults, the dad was old and Death came to take the dad. The first son, who became a lawyer, begged Death to let the dad live a few more years. Death agreed. When Death came back, the second son, who became a doctor begged Death to let his father live a few more days. Death agreed. When Death came back the third son, who became a priest begged Death to let the dad live till that candle wick burned out and he pointed to a candle. Death agreed. The third son knew Death wouldn't come back, and he didn't. Why not?
The third son went over and blew out the candle after Death left because the son said "till the candle wick burns out", not "till the candle burns out".
