Almost exactly a year ago I posed a card puzzle here That sparked a frenzy in the comments section. The solution to that puzzle was so contradictory that several readers rejected it outright. In honor As the anniversary approaches, it’s time to stir up more controversy with two more surprising card puzzles.
Why salt makes food taste better
I learned one of these from Presh Talwalkar and the other from Martin Gardner. So please forward any hate mail your way.
Did you miss last week’s puzzle? Check it here, and find your solution at the end of today’s article. Be careful not to read too far ahead if you haven’t solved the last week yet!
Puzzle #46: Next Aces
1. Shuffle a regular face-down deck of 52 cards and then turn one card at a time face up.
Which card is most likely to come immediately after the first ace appears: the king of spades or the ace of spades? In other words, you will turn over cards until you see an ace of any suit. Is he next Which card is most likely to be the king of spades or the ace of spades, or are they equally likely?
2. Rearrange the same deck and it will start flipping again. This time, before turning, you must guess when first black ace will appear. Which position on the platform is most likely or are they all the same?
I’ll be back on Monday with the answers and a new puzzle. Do you know of an interesting puzzle that you think should appear here? ? Send me a message at X @JackPMurtagh or send me an email at [email protected]
Solution to puzzle #45: There is no place like home
Last week’s puzzle asked you to take on the role of sports statistician. Did you find out how scheduling affects the NBA championship series?
Greetings to adanarg13 for your well articulated response.
In real basketball, one could argue that the order of games matters for psychological reasons (e.g. enjoying a streak might increase your chances of winning the next game), but in our mathematical model it turns out that the order of games games doesn’t matter at all. In both cases, the Celtics would still be more likely to win simply because they have an extra home game, even if they end up not using it. We will argue for the best of seven cases, but the same argument extends to other numbers of games.
The key idea is that even if a team wins four games before the seventh, playing the rest of the games simply for fun could not change the outcome of the championship. So we can look at the series as if they always play seven games no matter what and then look at who won the most games after all seven have been played. The team that plays at home most often has an edge.
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