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.
-
-
The probability that there's a cycle (there could only ever be at most one) longer than fifty turns out to be about 70%, and that corresponds to a prisoner needing to open more than fifty envelopes to get back to their number.
-
The solution is basically maximising the shareable information available to all the prisoners in a way which negates the "one prisoner loses, you all lose" rule by choosing a strategy which does that anyway.
- Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.