Related papers: Variations on the two-child problem
We investigate Bertrand's probabilistic paradox through the lens of discrete geometry and old-fashioned but reliable discrete probability. We approximate the plane unit circle with $1/n$ times $1/n$ boxes and count the pairs of boxes…
Hadwiger's conjecture asserts that any graph contains a clique minor with order no less than the chromatic number of the graph. We prove that this well-known conjecture is true for all graphs if and only if it is true for squares of split…
The subset sum problem is known to be an NP-hard problem in the field of computer science with the fastest known approach having a run-time complexity of $O(2^{0.3113n})$. A modified version of this problem is known as the perfect sum…
Consider the following problem. In a school with three classes containing $n$ students each, given that their genders are unknown, find the minimum possible number of triples of same-gender students not all of which are from the same class.…
Developing a better understanding of surprising or counterintuitive phenomena has constituted a significant portion of deep learning research in recent years. These include double descent, grokking, and the lottery ticket hypothesis --…
This paper deals with a new Bayesian approach to the two-sample problem. More specifically, let $x=(x_1,\ldots,x_{n_1})$ and $y=(y_1,\ldots,y_{n_2})$ be two independent samples coming from unknown distributions $F$ and $G$, respectively.…
Generalizing a formula of Stanley, we prove combinatorially that the probability that $1, 2, \dots, k$ are contained in the same cycle of a product of two random $n$-cycles is \[\frac{1}{k} + \frac{4 (-1)^n}{ \binom{2k}{k}}…
The McCarty Conjecture states that any McCarty Matrix (an $n\times n$ matrix $A$ with positive integer entries and each of the $2n$ row and column sums equal to $n$), can be additively decomposed into two other matrices, $B$ and $C$, such…
We give an excellent approximation of the average number of spins of a simplified version of a two-player version of the game Dreidel. We also make a conjecture on the average number of spins of the full version of the game.
There is well-known problem of geometric probability which can be quote as the Broken Spaghetti Problem. It addresses the following question: A stick of spaghetti breaks into three parts and all points of the stick have the same probability…
In this paper, we study the problem of splitting fairly bundles of items. We show that given $n$ bundles with $m$ kinds of items in them, it is possible to distribute the value of each kind of item fairly among $r$ persons by breaking apart…
This paper introduces a strategy in the two envelopes problem that utilizes the prior beliefs of two players about the amount of money that their envelopes can contain. This strategy gives them more information about the decision of…
We consider election scenarios with incomplete information, a situation that arises often in practice. There are several models of incomplete information and accordingly, different notions of outcomes of such elections. In one well-studied…
A certain sampling process, concerning an urn with balls of two colors, proposed in 1965 by B.E. Oakley and R.L. Perry, and discussed by Peter Winkler and Martin Gardner, that has an extremely simple answer for the probability, namely the…
The problem addressed concerns the determination of the average number of successive attempts of guessing a word of a certain length consisting of letters with given probabilities of occurrence. Both first- and second-order approximations…
The starting point of this work is an equality between two quantities $A$ and $B$ found in the literature, which involve the {\em doubling-modulo-an-odd-integer} map, i.e., $x\in {\mathbb N} \mapsto 2x \bmod{(2n+1)}$ for some positive…
The prediction of the final state probabilities of a general cuboid randomly thrown onto a surface is a problem that naturally arises in the minds of men and women familiar with regular cubic dice and the basic concepts of probability.…
The three gap theorem was originally a conjecture by Steinhaus, who asserted that there are at most three distinct gap lengths in the fractional parts of the sequence {\alpha},{2}{\alpha},{\cdots},{N}{\alpha} for any integer {N} and real…
Let ${\rm rad}(n)$ denote the product of distinct prime factors of an integer $n\geq 1$. The celebrated $abc$ conjecture asks whether every solution to the equation $a+b=c$ in triples of coprime integers $(a,b,c)$ must satisfy ${\rm…
A recent heuristic argument based on basic concepts in spectral analysis showed that the twin prime conjecture and a few other related primes counting problems are valid. A rigorous version of the spectral method, and a proof for the…