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)?

20 September 2015

Poet unknown…

“Aap gairon ki baat karte hain
Humne to apne bhi aazmayen hain
Log kaaton se bachke chalte hain,
Humne to phoolon se zakhm khaayen hain!!”

Roughly translated…

“You keep complaining about strangers
I have tried my own loved ones too
People try to stay clear of thorns
And I have been hurt by flowers!!”


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.