Related papers: Coins and Logic
The prisoners and hats puzzle, or simply the hat puzzle, is a family of games in which a group of prisoners are each assigned a colored hat and are asked to guess the color of their own hat. Various versions of the puzzle arise depending on…
This paper serves as the announcement of my program---a joke version of the Langlands Program. In connection with this program, I discuss an old hat puzzle, introduce a new hat puzzle, and offer a puzzle for the reader.
We envision a machine capable of solving mathematical problems. Dividing the quantitative reasoning system into two parts: thought processes and cognitive processes, we provide probabilistic descriptions of the architecture.
In this lecture I will talk about three mathematical puzzles involving mathematics and computation that have preoccupied me over the years. The first puzzle is to understand the amazing success of the simplex algorithm for linear…
We establish an equivalent condition to the validity of the Collatz conjecture, using elementary methods. We derive some conclusions and show several examples of our results. We also offer a variety of exercises, problems and conjectures.
Math is widely considered as a powerful tool and its strong appeal depends on the high level of abstraction it allows in modelling a huge number of heterogeneous phenomena and problems, spanning from the static of buildings to the flight of…
This recreational mathematics article shows that the game of Snakes and Ladders is intransitive: square 69 has a winning edge over 79, which in turn beats 73, which beats 69. Analysis of the game is a nice illustration of Markov chains,…
Several open problems in algebraic logic are solved.
We demonstrate that the free motion of any two-dimensional rigid body colliding elastically with two parallel, flat walls is equivalent to a billiard system. Using this equivalence, we analyze the integrable and chaotic properties of this…
I present and discuss a puzzle about wizards invented by John H. Conway.
We state some elementary problems concerning the relation between difference calculus and differential calculus, and we try to convince the reader that, in spite of the simplicity of the statements, a solution of these problems would be a…
In this paper we show several similarities among logic systems that deal simultaneously with deductive and quantitative inference. We claim it is appropriate to call the tasks those systems perform as Quantitative Logic Reasoning. Analogous…
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 $B$…
Here, we present a variant of the sliding coins game. Two coins are placed on distinct squares of a semi-infinite linear board with squares numbered $0, 1, 2, dots, $. Two players take turns and move a coin to a lower unoccupied square.…
Thirty original and collected problems, puzzles, and paradoxes in mathematics and physics are explained in this paper, taught by the author to the elementary and high school teachers at the University of New Mexico - Gallup in 1997-8 and…
Probabilistic logic programs are logic programs in which some of the facts are annotated with probabilities. Several classical probabilistic inference tasks (such as MAP and computing marginals) have not yet received a lot of attention for…
We introduce parallelism into the basic algebra of games to model concurrent game algebraically. Parallelism is treated as a new kind of game operation. The resulted algebra of concurrent games can be used widely to reason the parallel…
We prove some symmetric $q$-congruences.
Exploring the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in puzzle solving unveils critical insights into their potential and challenges in AI, marking a significant step towards understanding their applicability in complex reasoning…
We harness both human ingenuity and the power of symbolic computation to study the number of coin tosses until reaching $n$ Heads or $m$ Tails. We also talk about the closely related problem of reaching $n$ Heads and $m$ Tails. This paper…