25 April 2021

Great ride with John

After a couple of months, went out with John again. Knowing John, I was guessing that he would show up with yet another bike. He did not disappoint me. In the 40 odd months that I have known him – I met him at the motorcycle safety classes – this Honda Rebel 1100 is his ninth bike that I have seen him with!!!

He is certifiably crazy about bikes.

Had a good time riding around Lake Lanier and then grabbed lunch at Pig Tales.

24 April 2021

From the bartender’s corner – Tamarind Martini

While looking for cocktails that use Spicy Tamarind vodka, I came across this recipe. It actually does not use tamarind vodka. Instead, it uses tamarind paste (which I had!!).

Thoroughly mix half a lime worth of juice, couple of pinches of Tajin salt, quarter spoonful of tamarind sauce and a spoonful of sugar in a mixing glass. Pour ice, 2 ounces of vodka (I used Tito’s) and 3 ounces of water and mix thoroughly. Pour into a martini glass that has been rimmed with Tajin salt.

Nice tarty taste with a kick from the Tajin salt…

19 April 2021

Answer to the marbles in Brownian motion puzzle…

The easiest way to think about this problem is not to think of number of marbles in each color but the differences in number between colors. Let’s say “a”, “b” and “c” are the pairwise differences in colors. Their values are 10, 10 and 20 to begin with.

Let’s see what happens whenever there is a “hit”.
If the marbles are of same colors, of course no change in count happens – so a, b and c remain the same.
If the marbles are of different colors – then those two colors go down by 1 each and the third color goes up by 2. Which means the pairwise differences either remain the same (the two colors that hit) or they change by 3 (one color goes down by 1 and the resulting color goes up by 2).

So, the first concept to realize is that a, b and c always change in steps of 0 or steps of 3. There are no other step changes they can have.

Now, let’s say what if the marbles actually did become all of one color. What as the step right before it? We would have had to have all marbles of the same final color excepting two – one each of the other two colors. Thus if finally everything is green, in the penultimate step, there has to be one red, one blue and rest green. The red hits the blue to become green.

Note that in that penultimate step, the pairwise difference between two colors (that have one marble left each) is 0. And that is the second concept to realize.

Now putting these two concepts together…

Well, we started with a, b and c being 10, 10 and 20. Going in steps of 0 and 3, can any of these numbers ever get to 0? No. Therefore it will never reach the penultimate step.

Which means the marbles will never be of the same color !!

Category: Puzzles | LEAVE A COMMENT