Related papers: The Three Hat Problem
Probabilistic properties of tennis scoring systems are examined and compared with best-of-K systems. A model, where each player has his/her own probability of winning his/her service point and which remains invariant for the duration of the…
In this short article, we present a solution to one of the probability puzzles that Daniel Litt, a mathematician at the University of Toronto, posted on his X account earlier this year. The main goal of this note is to show how some of the…
A query game is a pair of a set $Q$ of queries and a set $\mathcal{F}$ of functions, or codewords $f:Q\rightarrow \mathbb{Z}.$ We think of this as a two-player game. One player, Codemaker, picks a hidden codeword $f\in \mathcal{F}$. The…
The Monty Hall problem is the TV game scenario where you, the contestant, are presented with three doors, with a car hidden behind one and goats hidden behind the other two. After you select a door, the host (Monty Hall) opens a second door…
Triangular peg solitaire is a well-known one-person game or puzzle. When one peg captures many pegs consecutively, this is called a sweep. We investigate whether the game can end in a dramatic fashion, with one peg sweeping all remaining…
This paper contributes a new way to evaluate AI. Much as one might evaluate a machine in terms of its performance at chess, this approach involves evaluating a machine in terms of its performance at a game called "MAD Chairs". At the time…
A fair coin is flipped $n$ times, and two finite sequences of heads and tails (words) $A$ and $B$ of the same length are given. Each time the word $A$ appears in the sequence of coin flips, Alice gets a point, and each time the word $B$…
Three science and engineering problems of recent interests -index coding, locally recoverable distributed storage, and guessing games on graphs- are discussed and the connection between their optimal solutions is elucidated. By generalizing…
In this paper we study a variant of the Malicious Ma\^{i}tre d' problem. This problem, attributed to computer scientist Rob Pike in Peter Winkler's book "Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur's Collection", involves seating diners around a…
We analyze the computational complexity of several new variants of edge-matching puzzles. First we analyze inequality (instead of equality) constraints between adjacent tiles, proving the problem NP-complete for strict inequalities but…
We study in depth the class of games with opacity condition, which are two-player games with imperfect information in which one of the players only has imperfect information, and where the winning condition relies on the information he has…
Let $H_n^{(3)}$ be a 3-uniform linear hypergraph, i.e. any two edges have at most one vertex common. A special hypergraph, {\em wicket}, is formed by three rows and two columns of a $3 \times 3$ point matrix. In this note, we give a new…
The Sliding Window Secretary Problem allows a window of choices to the Classical Secretary Problem, in which there is the option to choose the previous $K$ choices immediately prior to the current choice. We consider a case of this…
In repeated-game applications where both the collusive and non-collusive outcomes can be supported as equilibria, researchers must resolve underlying selection questions if theory will be used to understand counterfactual policies. One…
Combinatorial games are two-player games of pure strategy where the players, usually called Left and Right, move alternately. In this paper, we introduce Cheating Robot games. These arise from simultaneous-play combinatorial games where one…
Finding a counterfeit coin with the different weight from a set of visually identical coin using a balance, usually a two-armed balance, known as the balance question, is an intersting and inspiring question. Its variants involve…
The network coloring game has been proposed in the literature of social sciences as a model for conflict-resolution circumstances. The players of the game are the vertices of a graph with $n$ vertices and maximum degree $\Delta$. The game…
The probability of a given candidate winning a future election is worked out in closed form as a function of (i) the current support rates for each candidate, (ii) the relative positioning of the candidates within the political spectrum,…
We theoretically study the effect of a third person enforcement on a one-shot prisoner's dilemma game played by two persons, with whom the third person plays repeated prisoner's dilemma games. We find that the possibility of the third…
This paper is an overview and survey of work on the 3x+1 problem, also called the Collatz problem, and generalizations of it. It gives a history of the problem. It addresses two questions: (1) What can mathematics currently say about this…