Tag Archives: Test your intuition

TYI 54: A Variant of Elchanan Mossel’s Amazing Dice Paradox

The following question was inspired by recent comments to the post on Elchanan Mossel’s amazing Dice Paradox. A fair dice is a dice that when thrown you get each of the six possibilities with probability 1/6. A random dice is … Continue reading

Posted in Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 14 Comments

Test Your Intuition 53 by Ehud Friedgut: Which Way to Ride Your Bike

This post was kindly written by Ehud Friedgut. Shana Tova (= Happy New Jewish Year) to all our readers. The following is a real-life question. I recently rode my bike around a closed track. The track consists of a flat … Continue reading

Posted in Guest post, Sport, Test your intuition | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Test your intuition 52: Can you predict the ratios of ones?

Here is a problem I heard from Zachary Chase and Yuval Peres. Bob choses a sequences of zeroes and ones of length . The bits are presented to Alice one by one. Alice’s task is to choose, at a certain … Continue reading

Posted in Test your intuition | Tagged | 11 Comments

Test Your intuition 51

Suppose that and are two compact convex sets in space. Suppose that contains . Now consider two quantities is the average volume of a simplex forms by four points in drawn uniformly at random. is the average volume of a … Continue reading

Posted in Convexity, Geometry, Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged | 12 Comments

Answer to Test Your Intuition 50: Detecting a Deviator

Two weeks ago we asked: Ruth and Ron start together at the origin and take a walk on the integers. Every day they make a move. They take turns in flipping a coin and they move together right or left … Continue reading

Posted in Games, Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged | 8 Comments

Test Your Intuition 50. Two-Player Random Walk; Can You Detect Who Did Not Follow the Rules?

Ruth and Ron start together at the origin and take a walk on the integers. Every day they make a move. They take turns in flipping a coin and they move together right or left according to the outcome. Their … Continue reading

Posted in Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 13 Comments

Ehud Friedgut: How many cubes of 2×2×2 fit into a box of size 8×4×3? (TYI 49)

This blog post is kindly written by Ehud Friedgut. My daughter, Shiri, who’s in seventh grade, had the following question in a math exam: How many cubes of 2×2×2 fit into a box of size 8×4×3? Shiri divided the volumes, … Continue reading

Posted in Geometry, Riddles, Test your intuition | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

To cheer you up in difficult times 35 combined with Test Your Intuition 48: Alef’s corner – Jazz and Math

Test your intuition: What is the true title of this drawing?

Posted in Art, Music, Test your intuition, What is Mathematics | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Test your intuition 47: AGC-GTC-TGC-GTC-TGC-GAC-GATC-? what comes next in the sequence?

Before getting to the main topic of this post, first, Happy New Year 2022 and Merry Christmas to all readers, and second, a quick update: A community blog to discuss open problems in algebraic combinatorics was created. Everybody is invited … Continue reading

Posted in Algebra, Combinatorics, Geometry, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Test Your Intuition (46): What is the Reason for Maine’s Huge Influence?

Very quick updates: Corona: Israel is struggling with the pandemic with some successes,  some failures, and much debate. Peace: We have peace agreements now with several Arab countries, most recently with Sudan. This is quite stunning. Internal politics: As divided … Continue reading

Posted in Games, Probability, Statistics, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 6 Comments