Tag Archives: Test your intuition

Test Your Intuition 35: What is the Limiting Distance?

Posted on June 29, 2018 by

(Just heard it today from Sergiu Hart.) At time t=0, point A is at the origin (0,0) and point B is distance 1 appart at (0,1). A moves to the right (on the x-axis) with velocity 1  and B moves … Continue reading →

Posted in Test your intuition | Tagged , | 17 Comments

Test Your Intuition (34): Tiling high dimensional spaces with two-dimensional tiles.

Posted on April 15, 2018 by

A tile is a finite subset of . We can ask if can or cannot be partitioned into copies of . If   can be partitioned into copies of we say that tiles . Here is a simpe example. Let consists of … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Test your intuition | Tagged | 7 Comments

Stan Wagon, TYI 32: Ladies and Gentlemen: The Answer

Posted on October 22, 2017 by

TYI 32, kindly offered by Stan Wagon asked A round cake has icing on the top but not the bottom. Cut out a piece in the usual shape (a sector of a circle with vertex at the center), remove it, … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Geometry, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Ladies and Gentlemen, Stan Wagon: TYI 32 – A Cake Problem.

Posted on October 19, 2017 by

The following post was kindly contributed by Stan Wagon. Stan (Wikipedea) is famous for his books, papers, snow-sculptures, and square-wheels bicycles (see picture below) !     A round cake has icing on the top but not the bottom. Cut out a … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Guest blogger, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

TYI 31 – Rados Radoicic’s Rope Problem

Posted on October 4, 2017 by

  Ropemaker (source) Rados Radoicic wrote me: “Several years back, I heard the following puzzle that turns out to be rather ‘classical’: “There are N ropes in a bag. In each step, two rope ends are picked uniformly at random, tied … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 7 Comments

TYI 30: Expected number of Dice throws

Posted on September 7, 2017 by

Test your intuition: You throw a dice until you get 6. What is the expected number of throws (including the throw giving 6) conditioned on the event that all throws gave even numbers. follow-up post

Posted in Combinatorics, Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged | 38 Comments

Test your intuition 29: Diameter of various random trees

Posted on September 5, 2017 by

Both trees in general and random trees in particular are wonderful objects. And there is nothing more appropriate to celebrate Russ Lyons great birthday conference “Elegance in Probability” (taking place now in Tel Aviv) than to test your intuition, dear … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 19 Comments

TYI 26: Attaining the Maximum

Posted on April 1, 2016 by

(Thanks, Dani!) Given a random sequence , ******, , let . and assume that .  What is the probability that the maximum value of is attained only for a single value of ? Test your intuition: is this probability bounded … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged | 21 Comments

TYI 25: The Automorphism Group of the Symmetric Group

Posted on December 2, 2014 by

True or False: The group of automorphisms of the symmetric group , n ≥ 3 is itself.  

Posted in Algebra and Number Theory, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Test your intuition 24: Which of the following three groups is trivial

Posted on November 13, 2014 by

Martin Bridson We have three finitely presented groups A is generated by two generators a and b and one relation   B is generated by three generators a, b, c and three relations ,    . C is generated by four generators a, b, c, d … Continue reading →

Posted in Algebra and Number Theory, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 10 Comments