Help me get out of jail free?
You are a prisoner sentenced to death. The Emperor offers you a chance to live by playing a simple game. He gives you 50 black marbles, 50 white marbles and 2 empty bowls. He then says, "Divide these 100 marbles into these 2 bowls. You can divide them any way you like as long as you use all the marbles. Then I will blindfold you and mix the bowls around. You then can choose one bowl and remove ONE marble. If the marble is WHITE you will live, but if the marble is BLACK... you will die."
How do you divide the marbles up so that you have the greatest probability of choosing a WHITE marble?
posted by David @ 10:26 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Put a white marble in one bowl and the rest in the other bowl. You have a 50% chance of choosing the white-marble bowl and getting a 100% chance of life. The other bowl gives you a 49/99 chance of life, which comes out to a little less than 75%.
This is of course, assuming you can't cheat by picking the bowl that's not as heavy as the other one...
Correct!
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