Posts Tagged ‘logic puzzles’
Tuesday Links!
* The Paradox of New Buildings on Campus: Even as long-neglected maintenance threatens to further escalate the price of higher education, universities continue to borrow and spend record amounts on new buildings.
* The “terminal” sabbatical eases the aging academic into “retirement,” the meat grinder admins use to nourish new administrators.
* Visual Proof That America’s Weather Has Gone Completely Insane.
* Our friend Nina Riggs writes of her family’s history of cancer.
* The New York Times reviews Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
* Game Theory Is Really Counterintuitive. And from Cracked: 20 Paradoxes Most Human Minds Can’t Wrap Themselves Around.
* Jessa “Bookslut” Crispin has a book! Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto.
* It’s not enough to just turn over your lunch money; you have to enjoy it.
* A final response to the “Tell me why Trump is a fascist”.
* Weird science: MIT Experiment Proves Quantum Mechanics Still in Effect at Over 400-Miles.
* Twilight of the VCR. A nation remembers.
* Disability in Abramsverse Star Trek.
* UnREAL probably is going to be bad from here on out.
* Trying to understand the data on desistance in transgender kids.
* What I’ve Learned From Having A Trans Partner.
* Brain metaphors in the Age of Trump: Is Your Nervous System a Democracy or a Dictatorship?
* Elsewhere on science corner: What high heels say about the massive gap between the rich and the poor. Ancient Campfires May Have Unleashed Humanity’s Top Bacterial Killer. Proton Gradients and the Origin of Life. This map shows how many people are getting high near you. Watch language evolve as little sims wander around a grid of islands. Personality Change May Be Early Sign of Dementia, Experts Say.
* #TheWisdomofMarkets: Nintendo shares plummet after investors realize it doesn’t actually make Pokémon Go.
* Details emerge about the new Nintendo system that I will almost certainly be buying my child sight unseen.
* Interesting details about the accident that hurt Harrison Ford on the set of The Force Awakens.
* Your policy, not mine: Pokémon Go players urged not to venture into Fukushima disaster zone.
* “You are surprisingly likely to have a living doppelgänger.”
* “Mysterious green slimy foam emerges from Utah sewer.”
* And I suppose you do have to admire it.
Logic Puzzle of the Night
NAWNCO. Figuring out the rules is pretty much the whole game, so, have at it.
One Rapper Likes Big Butts and Cannot Lie; One Rapper Likes Small Butts and Always Lies
Donkeylicious celebrates nineteen years of Sir Mix-a-Lot with a novel logic puzzle.
You are curious whether your butt is big or small. Unfortunately, you lack the ability to accurately assess the size of butts. Fortunately, there are three rappers before you who can accurately assess the size of your butt. You are of their preferred gender, so they are willing to collectively entertain exactly one yes-or-no question from you, to which they will each give an answer.
One rapper likes big butts and cannot lie. One rapper likes small butts and always lies. One rapper likes all butts but shares your inability to assess butt size, and will answer yes or no at random if asked whether a butt is big or small. You do not know which rapper is which. All the rappers know all other facts relevant to the situation, including everyone’s identity and butt preferences.
Before you are able to ask your question, one rapper receives a booty call (the size of the booty is unknown to you) and leaves the room. The other two rappers remain and are willing to pronounce on your question. You still do not know who any of the rappers are.
To determine the size of your butt, what question should you ask them? (You may assume that all butts can be classified as either big or small and ignore contextual factors, e.g. from the presence of Oakland booty.)
Studying Maths
In a country in which people only want boys every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?
I more or less spent my day taking every possible position on every possible variation on this question. Is there any way I can get my Sunday back?
Late Night Late Night
Late night!
* Still more logic puzzles, via the comments.
* My father directs our attention to a disturbing provision in North Carolina state law.
* I mean, we just went from winter to spring. In Missouri when we go from winter to spring, that’s a good climate change. I don’t want to stop that climate change, you know. Yglesias uses this inanity to try and make a serious point, but man. That’s the second-stupidest thing ever said about climate change.
* Michael Pollan or Michel Foucault?
Friday Night!
Friday night in Albuquerque.
* Today in tasers: 72-year-old grandmother Tasered for refusing to sign a speeding ticket. New York judge allows Tasering to force compliance with DNA test. The system is working as intended; obviously these are both cases where lethal force would have been necessary in the absence of a Taser. (Via MeFi.)
* The Memory Card covers iconic moments from classic video games. Also via MeFi.
* ‘Graveyard Civiizations’: The idea here is that we can explain the Fermi paradox (’Where are they?’) by assuming that exponential growth is not a sustainable development pattern for intelligent civilizations.
* Blue Eyes: The Hardest Logic Puzzle in the World.
* Empire Magazine has your spot-the-reference movie poster. Via Denise.
* Conan v. Super Mario. (Last two via Neil.)
* 40 Fantastic Sand Sculptures. Via my dad.
Friday Night Links of Variable Goofiness
Friday night links of variable goofiness.
* Ze Frank has your optical illusion of the night.
* Lateral thinking interview questions from Microsoft.
You have two jars, 50 red marbles and 50 blue marbles. A jar will be picked at random, and then a marble will be picked from the jar. Placing all of the marbles in the jars, how can you maximize the chances of a red marble being picked? What are the exact odds of getting a red marble using your scheme?
* My friend Jay explains the story behind his possession of the world’s most badass scar.
* Who ate all the Neanderthals? Oops.
* Which of our own closely held beliefs will our own children and grandchildren by appalled by?
* Also: classic sci-fi box office adjusted for inflation.
* Jacob directs our attention to the growing threat of Transforminators.
Lateral Thinking
You’re standing in front of a 100 story building with two identical bowling balls. You’ve been tasked with testing the bowling balls’ resilience. The building has a stairwell with a window at each story from which you can (conveniently) drop bowling balls.
To test the bowling balls you need to find the first floor at which they break. It might be the 100th floor or it might be the 50th floor, but if it breaks somewhere in the middle you know it will break at every floor above.
Devise an algorithm which guarantees you’ll find the first floor at which one of your bowling balls will break. You’re graded on your algorithm’s worst-case running time.
The bowling ball problem. This one has a neat, easy-to-understand lateral-thinking solution.
The hardest logic puzzle ever, at Wikipedia, via Cynical-C.
Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are ‘da’ and ‘ja’, in some order. You do not know which word means which.
Boolos (1996) provides the following clarifications:
* It could be that some god gets asked more than one question (and hence that some god is not asked any question at all).
* What the second question is, and to which god it is put, may depend on the answer to the first question. (And of course similarly for the third question.)
* Whether Random speaks truly or not should be thought of as depending on the flip of a coin hidden in his brain: if the coin comes down heads, he speaks truly; if tails, falsely.
* Random will answer ‘da’ or ‘ja’ when asked any yes-no question.
Solution will go in the comments once I figure it out…
Gerry Canavan 