Related papers: Note on a Coin Tossing Problem Posed by Daniel Lit…
We study a combinatorial game derived from a problem in the German National Mathematics Competition. In this game, two players take turns removing numbers from a finite set of natural numbers, aiming to satisfy a certain divisibility…
Two-player graph games are a fundamental model for reasoning about the interaction of agents. These games are played between two players who move a token along a graph. In bidding games, the players have some monetary budget, and at each…
A gambler walks into a hypothetical fair casino with a very real dollar bill, but by the time he leaves he's exchanged the dollar for a random amount of money. What is lost in the process? It may be that the gambler walks out at the end of…
When flipping a fair coin, let $W = L_1L_2...L_N$ with $L_i\in\{H,T\}$ be a binary word of length $N=2$ or $N=3$. In this paper, we establish second- and third-order linear recurrence relations and their generating functions to discuss the…
We establish fun parallels between coin-weighing puzzles and knights-and-knaves puzzles.
Chances of a gambler are always lower than chances of a casino in the case of an ideal, mathematically perfect roulette, if the capital of the gambler is limited and the minimum and maximum allowed bets are limited by the casino. However, a…
In this work we present a detailed analysis using the Markov chain theory of some versions of the truel game in which three players try to eliminate each other in a series of one-to-one competitions, using the rules of the game. Besides…
ApSimon's Mints problem is a very difficult and often misunderstood counterfeit-coin puzzle. I explain the problem and suggest ways to approach it, while giving several fun exercises for the reader.
We identify a new type of paradoxical behavior in dice, where the sum of independent rolls produces a deceptive sequence of dominance relations. We call these ``anti-inductive dice". Consider a game with two players and two non-identical…
We consider a two player simultaneous-move game where the two players each select any permissible $n$-sided die for a fixed integer $n$. A player wins if the outcome of his roll is greater than that of his opponent. Remarkably, for $n>3$,…
Several differential equations usually appearing in mathematical physics are solved through a power series expansion, which reduces in solving difference equations. In this paper a probability problem is presented whose solution follows a…
We investigate a coin-weighing puzzle that appeared in the Moscow Math Olympiad in 1991. We generalize the puzzle by varying the number of participating coins, and deduce an upper bound on the number of weighings needed to solve the puzzle…
We study a game puzzle that has enjoyed recent popularity among mathematicians, computer scientist, coding theorists and even the mass press. In the game, $n$ players are fitted with randomly assigned colored hats. Individual players can…
In 2007, Alexander Shapovalov posed an old twist on the classical coin weighing problem by asking for strategies that manage to conceal the identities of specific coins while providing general information on the number of fake coins. In…
We consider the problem of revealing a small hidden lattice from the knowledge of a low-rank sublattice modulo a given sufficiently large integer -- the {\em Hidden Lattice Problem}. A central motivation of study for this problem is the…
Simulating an arbitrary discrete distribution $D \in [0, 1]^n$ using fair coin tosses incurs trade-offs between entropy complexity and space and time complexity. Shannon's theory suggests that $H(D)$ tosses are necessary and sufficient, but…
In this work the properties of minority games containing agents which try to winning all the time are studied by means of computational simulations. We have considered several ways of introducing above the rules clever players using…
This paper has a twofold scope. The first one is to clarify and put in evidence the isomorphic character of two theories developed in quite different fields: on one side, threshold logic, on the other side, simple games. One of the main…
Enormous successes have been made by quantum algorithms during the last decade. In this paper, we combine the quantum game with the problem of data clustering, and then develop a quantum-game-based clustering algorithm, in which data points…
Given a dollar, how many ways are there to make change using pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters? What if you are given a different amount of money? What if you use different coin denominations? This is a well known problem and formulas…