There are 100 prisoners, numbered 1-100. The prisoners' numbers are written onto 100 cards, put randomly into 100 envelopes numbered 1-100. They can't communicate, but are invited, one by one, to open 50 envelopes. If any prisoner fails to find his number, they all get killed.
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At best, there's a 50% chance any one prisoner can find his number. It would seem like there's a probability of (½)¹⁰⁰ or 0.00000000000000000000000000008% that every prisoner could find his own number, if each were to check 50 envelopes at random.
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They could certainly do even worse than this. If they all agreed in advance to open envelopes 1-50, then fifty of them would be guaranteed never to find their number and they'd all die. But could they come up with a strategy in advance which would improve their survival chances?
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Replying to @emote_control
...is the correct answer I didn't think of!
7:25 AM - 29 Sep 2019
from Krakow, Poland
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