26 September 2015

Puzzle: Boarding a plane

Last morning, I was having a rather humorous email exchange with some of my friends from my previous job when one of them, Gasan, sent a very interesting puzzle. This is not that simple. What is surprising is his kids got this problem as a homework problem. Also Raj let me know that the answers are all over the internet. So, if you want to exercise your brain, do not Google it up. After you have given it whatever time you want to give, feel free to look up the answer.

Meanwhile, just to show how much fun we had as a team – or rather the team had at my expense, I am going to copy Gasan’s articulation of the problem as is…

A line of 100 airline passengers are waiting to board a plane. They each hold a ticket to one of the 100 seats on the flight. (for some reference, let’s say that the nth passenger in line has a ticket for the seat number n.)
Unfortunately, the first person in line is a crazy bald headed guy named Rajib, and will ignore the seat number on their ticket, picking a random seat to occupy. All the other passengers including Gasan, Chris, Sunjay, even Raj and Karthik are quite normal, and will go to their proper seat unless it is already occupied. If it is occupied, they will then find a free seat to sit in, at random.
What is the probability that the last (100th) person to board the plane will sit in their proper seat (#100)?

17 September 2015

A simple but elegant puzzle

Five friends at the gym came upon the new weighing machine recently installed there. They decided to take their weights in pairs (two at a time). The five of them can have ten pairings. They found the weights to be 259, 251, 264, 281, 268, 242, 257, 266, 253 and 275 pounds.
From this can you find out what were the individual weights of the friends?

If you are reading this on FB, message me if you have found the answers and your method.

13 September 2015

Math puzzle (relatively easy)

Yet another custom when my nephews and niece are around in their granddad’s house along with me is to go out for a walk after dinner and solve mathematical or logic puzzles. You might remember how, last time, we got stuck on getting two numbers (was it 19 and 21??) using the digits 1, 2 and 3 and any number of operators.

Last night, we came up with a variation – Using the digits 1, 2 and 4 and no other digits (and you can use them only once) you have to come up with 1 thru 25. 20 posed an interesting problem. Can you try it?

Using 1, 2 and 4 get 20. You can use any number of mathematical operators and symbols any number of times (but no other digits than the above and that too only once). For the record, trigonometric functions are not allowed since there is an assumption of the unit (radians/degrees). We reluctantly accept logarithms but try to find alternate answers. We certainly accept concatenation. Meaning you can get 16 by simly saying 12+4.

6 September 2015

Wait a minute…

West Point is where the U.S. Military Academy is. This is where the best and strongest of us all are trained to protect the country and its citizens. Yesterday, in the academy, thirty of these best and strongest were badly hurt… not in hand to hand combat or a live practice gone awry… but in a pillow fight!!! A pillow fight!!! How exactly do you get a concussion in a pillow fight?

Our enemies will be trembling in fear… once they figure out how to stop laughing !! 🙂

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/05/us/west-point-pillow-fight/