FINANCE AND ECONOMICS CLUB

IIT GUWAHATI
 Quizzler
Finance and Economics Club, IIT Guwahati

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 About the Club

The Finance and Economics Club, IIT Guwahati functions as a platform for
enthusiastic students to come together and learn the intriguing and fun world
of finance, by organizing introductory sessions for people who are interested in
finance irrespective of prior knowledge, by inviting Industry Leaders and alumni.

Since 2014 the club has been trying its very best to serve society and the IIT
Guwahati students in the best possible manner, and while doing the same, we
started segmenting our work specifically in multiple teams named: FEC Quant,
FEC Capital, and FEC De-Fi. All the teams work rigorously throughout the
year on multiple projects. And even participate in various competitions all over
the globe.

We at Finance and Economics Club, IIT Guwahati believe that Finance is not
all about money but one of the most crucial parts of our lives. We try our best
to remove this stigma by conducting workshops, courses, events, and much more.

We strive by our principle - Be an asset to everyone, liability to none.

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 Preface

This book contains 64 Questions in total, not 64 actually, as few of the

questions in the book are comprised of multiple questions. This book is
a simple compilation of some of the best probability puzzles out there
from multiple books and websites, including “Fifty Challenging Problems
in probability”, “A practical guide to Quantitative Finance interviews”,
“Brainstellar ”, “Stanford Education Online Puzzles”, and many more.

Through this book, we have attempted to make practicing maths and

probability before your interviews as simple as possible by bringing all
possible unique questions in one place rather than them being spread out
across different websites.

The book has questions marked with (∗∗) and (∗ ∗ ∗) signs. (∗∗) means
the puzzle is challenging and will require you to think a bit out of the
box, and you should think of multiple ways of solving it. Whereas (∗ ∗ ∗)
specifies questions that are a new concept you should know before sitting
for a Quantitative Finance interview.

Solutions to the problems are provided through links to different web-

sites (which can be accessed by clicking on the Question title), which we
believe best explain the solutions to these questions. We have tried our
best to compile a variety of questions but in case you ever want to practice
more, please refer to the resources we mentioned in the first paragraph.

We wish you luck and have fun solving the problems!

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Contents
1 The Sock Drawer 1

2 Successive Wins 1

3 The Flippant Juror 1

4 Trials until First Success 1

5 Coin in Square 1

6 Frosty the Snowman 2

7 Fork in the Road 2

8 Lady with 2 Children 2

9 Destructive Testing 2

10 Three Way Duel or Truel 3

11 Upside Down Cards 3

12 Balancing Coins ** 3

13 Grid Traveller ** 3

14 Monty Hall Problem *** 4

15 The Game of NIM 4

16 Fake Coins Proof *** 4

17 Odd Hourglasses 4

18 Mowing Fields 4

19 Athletics Champion ** 5

20 Free Drinks 5

21 Crossing a River 5

22 Travelling the Earth *** 5

23 Evening the Sales 5

24 Birthday Problems *** 6

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25 The Cliff-Hanger 7

26 Gambler’s Ruin 7

27 Bold Play vs. Cautious Play 7

28 Molina’s Urns 7

29 The Fly in a Cubic Room 7

30 The Case of Pirates Democracy *** 8

31 Airplane seating problem 9

32 First to Hundred 9

33 Sum of 4’s and 5’s 9

34 The Locomotive Problem 9

35 The Broken Bar 9

36 Buffon’s Needle *** 10

37 One Mile Track 11

38 Dinner Check 11

39 Three Light Switches 11

40 A Standard Card Problem 11

41 Expected sum of distances in a triangle 11

42 Alter/Nate (Jane Street Puzzle) 12

43 Box packing *** 13

44 Calender Cubes 13

45 Quant Salary *** 13

46 Wise Men 13

47 The Pigeon Hole Principle *** 14

48 Sample with or without Replacement ** 15

49 The Ballot Box 15

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50 Ties in Matching Pennies 15

51 The Unfair Subway 15

52 Lengths of Random Chords 15

53 Checking if a coin is Fair 16

54 Unexpected Number Guessing 16

55 Summation until One 16

56 Random Variable Comparison ** 16

57 The Thick Coin 16

58 Number Guessing Game *** 17

59 Dividing a Sphere with Just 5 Cuts 17

60 Winning a Tennis Tournament 17

61 Pirate Treasure Division *** 17

62 Should you trade a Bouncy Stock ** 18

63 The Clumsy Chemist 18

64 The First Ace 18

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1 The Sock Drawer
A drawer contains red socks and black socks. When two socks are drawn at
random, the probability that both are red is 12 . (a) How small can the number
of socks in the drawer be? (b) How small if the number of black socks is even?

2 Successive Wins
To encourage Elmer’s promising tennis career, his father offers him a prize if he
wins (at least) two tennis sets in a row in a three-set series to be played with his
father and the club champion alternately: father-champion-father or champion-
father-champion, according to Elmer’s choice. The champion is a better player
than Elmer’s father. Which series should Elmer Choose?

3 The Flippant Juror

A three-man jury has two members each of whom independently has probability
p of making the correct decision and a third member who flips a coin for each
decision (majority rules). A one-man jury has a probability p of making the
correct decision. Which jury has the better probability of making the correct
decision?

4 Trials until First Success

On average, how many times must a die be thrown until one gets a 6?

5 Coin in Square
In a common carnival game a player tosses a penny from a distance of about
5 feet onto the surface of a table ruled in 1-inch squares. If the penny ( 34 inch
in diameter) falls entirely inside a square, the player receives 5 cents but does
not get his penny back; otherwise, he loses his penny. If the penny lands on the
table, what is his chance to win?

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6 Frosty the Snowman
Frosty the Snowman wants to create a small snowman friend for himself. The
new snowman needs a base, torso, and a head, all three of which should be
spheres. The torso should be no larger than the base and the head should be
no larger than the torso.

For building material, Frosty has a spherical snowball with a 6-inch radius.
Since Frosty likes to keep things simple, he also wants the radius of each of the
three pieces to be a positive integer. Can Frosty accomplish this?

7 Fork in the Road

You reach a fork in the road. A sign explains that in one direction is Heaven
and the other is Hell. Each path is blocked by a Guard. The sign goes on to say
that one of the guards will always lie and the other will always tell the truth, it
does not say which guard is which. We assume that the guards do know which
path leads to where.

You may ask one question of only one guard so that you can determine, with
certainty, the way to Heaven. What is that question?

8 Lady with 2 Children

A lady has two children. One is a boy. What are the chances of the other child
also being a boy? How does this change if you are told the oldest child is a boy?

9 Destructive Testing
There is a building with 100 stories. You want to test how much impact a partic-
ular type of cell phone can sustain when dropped from a certain floor. Assume
there is a floor x < 100 such that the cell phone will break when dropped from
floor x or any floor above it and it won’t break when dropped from a floor below
x. You have two cell phones to spare.

How do you design a testing strategy so that you can determine x by the fewest
number of drops? Note that you can do a test by dropping the cell phone from
any floor, but a cell phone can’t be used anymore if it’s broken.

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10 Three Way Duel or Truel
Alice, Bob, and Cheri, three smart people, arrange a three-way duel. Alice is
a poor shot, hitting her target only 31 of the time on average. Bob is better,
hitting his target 23 of the time. Cheri is a sure shot hitting 100% of the time.
They take turns shooting, first Alice, then Bob, then Cheri, then back to Alice,
and so on until one is left. What is Alice’s best course of action? And her
chances of survival?

11 Upside Down Cards

You are in a dark room with a deck of cards. N of the cards are face up and the
rest are face down. You can’t see the cards. How do you divide the deck into
two piles with equal numbers of face-up cards in each?

12 Balancing Coins **
You are given a set of scales and 90 coins. The scales are of the same type as
above. You must pay $100 every time you use the scales.

The 90 coins appear to be identical. In fact, 89 of them are identical, and

one is of different weight. Your task is to identify the unusual coin and to dis-
card it while minimizing the maximum possible cost of weighing (another task
might be to minimize the expected cost of weighing).

What is your algorithm to complete this task? What is the most it can cost to
identify the unusual coin?

13 Grid Traveller **
You start in the top left corner of a 6x6 grid, your goal is to get to the bottom
right corner. You can only move to the right or down. You can’t move diago-
nally and you can’t move backward.

How many different ways are there to get from the start to the finish?

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14 Monty Hall Problem ***
I have three envelopes, into one of them I put a $20 note. I lay the envelopes out
on a table in front of me and allow you to pick one envelope. You hold but do not
open this envelope. I then take one of the envelopes from the table, demonstrate
to you that it was empty, screw it up and throw it away. The question is would
you rather stick with the envelope you have selected or exchange it for the one
on the table? Why? What would be the expected value to you of the exchange?

15 The Game of NIM

You and I are to play a competitive game. We shall take turns calling out inte-
gers. The first person to call out ’50’ wins. The rules are as follows: The player
who starts must call out an integer between 1 and 10, inclusive; A new number
called out must exceed the most recent number called by at least one and by no
more than 10.

Do you want to go first, and if so, what is your strategy?

16 Fake Coins Proof ***

You are a rare coins expert and have determined which 7 out of 14 gold coins
are fake, but now you need to demonstrate to the judge which ones are fake. It
is known that real coins all weigh the same, fake coins all weigh the same, and
fake coins weigh less than real ones (but are otherwise identical).

Using a traditional double-pan balance scale just 3 times, how can you prove
exactly which of the 14 coins are fake?

17 Odd Hourglasses
You have two odd hourglasses: one that times exactly 4 minutes and one that
times exactly 7 minutes. What is the best way to measure exactly 9 minutes
using just these two hourglasses?

18 Mowing Fields
Adam can mow a field in 1 hour, at the same time Bob can mow 2 fields, if they
work together how long does it take them to mow a field?

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19 Athletics Champion **
Three athletes (and only three athletes) participate in a series of track and field
events. Points are awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each event (the same
points for each event, i.e. 1st always gets x points, 2nd always gets y points, 3rd
always gets z points), with x > y > z > 0, and all point values being integers.

The athletes are named Adam, Bob, and Charlie: Adam finished first over-
all with 22 points, Bob won the Javelin event and finished with 9 points overall,
Charlie also finished with 9 points overall.

Who finished second in the 100-meter dash (and why)?

20 Free Drinks
At a whisky tasting Mr Cheap works out that for every 10 used, empty, glasses
he can collect, he can pour the dregs together to make a whole new glass of
whisky. At the end of the day, he is able to find 100 empty glasses. How many
full glasses can he now drink?

21 Crossing a River
A farmer is on his way back from the market, with him he has a fox, a chicken,
and some grain. When he reaches a river crossing he must use a small boat only
big enough for him and one other item. Unfortunately, if the fox is left alone
with the chicken it will eat it, as will the chicken eat the grain. Explain how
the farmer can cross the river.

22 Travelling the Earth ***

You are at a point on the Earth. You travel 100 miles South, 100 miles East,
and 100 Miles North. You arrive back where you started. Where are you? You
are NOT at the North Pole.

23 Evening the Sales

A bread salesman sells on average 20 cakes on a round of his route. What is
the chance that he sells an even number of cakes? (We assume the sales follow
the Poisson distribution.)

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24 Birthday Problems ***
Birthday Problems are important and are most frequently asked in Quant and
Machine Learning Interviews. Try to solve the problems on your own first and
then look at the solution.

(a) Birthday Pairings What is the least number of persons required if the
probability exceeds 12 that two or more of them have the same birthday? (Year
of birth need not match.)

(b) Finding Your Birthmate You want to find someone whose birthday
matches yours. What is the least number of strangers whose birthdays you
need to ask about to have a 50-50 chance?

(c) Relating the Birthday Pairings and Birthmate Problems If r per-

sons compare birthdays in the pairing problem, the probability is PR that at
least 2 have the same birthday. What should n be in the personal birthmate
problem to make your probability of success approximately PR ?

(d) Birthday Holidays Labor laws in Erewhon require factory owners to give
every worker a holiday whenever one of them has a birthday and to hire without
discrimination on grounds of birthdays. Except for these holidays they work a
365−day year. The owners want to maximize the expected total number of man-
days worked per year in a factory. How many workers do factories in Erewhon
have?

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25 The Cliff-Hanger
From where he stands, one step toward the cliff would send the drunken man
over the edge. He takes random steps, either toward or away from the cliff. At
any step, his probability of taking a step away is 23 , of a step toward the cliff 13 .
What is his chance of escaping the cliff?

26 Gambler’s Ruin
Player M has $1, and Player N has $2. Each match gives one of the players
$1 from the other. Player M is better enough than Player N that he wins 32 of
the plays. They play until one is bankrupt. What is the chance that Player M
wins?

27 Bold Play vs. Cautious Play

At Las Vegas, a man with $20 needs $40, but he is too embarrassed to wire his
wife for more money. He decides to invest in roulette (which he doesn’t enjoy
playing) and is considering two strategies: bet the $20 on “evens” all at once
and quit if he wins or loses, or bet on “evens” one dollar at a time until he has
won or lost $20. Compare the merits of the strategies.

28 Molina’s Urns
Two urns contain the same total number of balls, some blacks and some whites
in each. From each urn are drawn n(> 3) balls with replacement. Find the
number of drawings and the composition of the two urns so that the probability
that all white balls are drawn from the first urn is equal to the probability that
the drawing from the second is either all whites or all blacks.

29 The Fly in a Cubic Room

You are a bug sitting in one corner of a cubic room. You wish to walk (no
flying) to the extreme opposite corner (the one farthest from you). Describe the
shortest path that you can walk.

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30 The Case of Pirates Democracy ***
Similar to the earlier discussed Birthday Problems, The Pirates Democracy is
also very famous in Quant Firms to check basic understanding of Probability
concepts.

100 pirates need to allocate 100 identical laptops among them. Their
democratic system works as follows: All pirates are ranked by their se-
niority. First, the most senior pirate (called ”Majority leader”) proposes an
allocation plan that states exactly how many laptops each pirate would get.
The 100 pirates would vote on the plan (no filibuster) and it would pass if more
than or equal to half pirates voted for it. If it passes, pirates take their laptops
and go home. If it fails, the one who proposed the plan (the most senior pirate
in this case) would be killed, and then the second most senior pirate would
take the place of ”Majority leader” and propose his plan. We repeat the same
process above in the order of seniority until someone’s plan is passed.

Assume every pirate makes his decision based on the following prior-
ities:

1. He doesn’t want to die.

2. Given he’s not going to die, he would prefer to get as many laptops as pos-
sible.
3. Given he’s going to get the same number of laptops, he would prefer as many
other pirates to die as possible. Also, assume every pirate is smart and knows
everyone else is smart, and so on.

(a) Part One - What will happen? i.e. whose proposal will be passed and
what is the proposal?

(b) Part Two - What happens if there are 435 pirates (but still only 100
laptops)? This is qualitatively more difficult than the case with 100 pirates.

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31 Airplane seating problem
100 passengers are boarding an airplane with 100 seats. Everyone has a ticket
with his seat number. These 100 passengers board the airplane in order. How-
ever, the first passenger lost his ticket so he just takes a random seat. For any
subsequent passenger, he either sits on his seat or, if the seat is taken, he takes
a random empty seat. What’s the probability that the last passenger would sit
on his own seat? There is a very simple explanation for the result.

32 First to Hundred
You and a friend play ”first to 100”, a game in which you start with 0, and
you each take turns adding an integer between 1 and 10 to the sum. Whoever
makes the sum reach 100 is the winner.

Is there a winning strategy? If so, what is it?

33 Sum of 4’s and 5’s

How many numbers from 1 to 1000 (inclusive) can be written as the sum of
some number of 4’s and/or 5’s? For example, 4 + 4 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 23.

34 The Locomotive Problem

(a) A railroad numbers its locomotives in order, 1, 2, ..., N . One day you see
a locomotive and its number is 60. How many locomotives does the company
have?

(b) You have looked at 5 locomotives and the largest number observed is 60.
Again guess how many locomotives the company has.

35 The Broken Bar

A bar is broken at random in two places. Find the average size of the smallest,
the middle-sized, and the largest pieces.

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36 Buffon’s Needle ***
Buffon’s Needle is one of the oldest problems in the field of geometrical proba-
bility. It was first stated in 1777. It involves dropping a needle on a lined sheet
of paper and determining the probability of the needle crossing one of the lines
on the page. The remarkable result is that the probability is directly related to
the value of pi.

(a) A table of infinite expanse has inscribed on it a set of parallel lines spaced
2a units apart. A needle of length 2l (smaller than 2a) is twirled and tossed
on the table. What is the probability that when it comes to rest it crosses a line?

(b) Suppose we toss a needle of length 2l (less than 1) on a grid with both
horizontal and vertical rulings spaced one unit apart. What is the mean num-
ber of lines the needle crosses? (I have dropped the 2a for the spacing because
we might as well think of the length of the needle as measured in units of spac-
ing.)

(c) In the previous problem let the needle be of arbitrary length, then what
is the mean number of crosses?

10
37 One Mile Track
Say you are driving on a one-mile track. You do one lap at 30 miles an hour.
How fast do you have to go on the second lap to average 60 miles an hour?

38 Dinner Check
You and your friend go out to dinner together, and the bill is $25. You and your
friend each pay $15 in cash which your waiter gives to the cashier. The cashier
hands back $5 to the waiter. The waiter keeps $3 as a tip and hands back $1 to
each of you. So, you and your friend paid $14 each for the meal, for a total of
$28. The waiter has $3, and that makes $31. Where did the extra dollar come
from?

39 Three Light Switches

You’re standing at three light switches at the bottom of the stairs to the attic.
Each one corresponds to one of three lights in the attic, but you cannot see the
lights from where you stand. You can turn the switches on and off and leave
them in any position. How can you identify which switch corresponds to which
light bulb if you are only allowed one trip upstairs?

40 A Standard Card Problem

You are playing a card game against one opponent. The game starts with 21
cards on a table. You and your opponent alternate turns, and during each turn,
a player may pick up 1, 2, or 3 cards. The winner is the person that picks up
the last card. You go first. What is your first move, and what is the optimal
strategy to win this game?

41 Expected sum of distances in a triangle

In a triangle with sides 45, 60, and 75, what is the expected sum of distances
from a point to its sides?

11
42 Alter/Nate (Jane Street Puzzle)
Two friends, Alter and Nate, have a conversation:

Alter: Nate, let’s play a game. I’ll pick an integer between 1 and 10 (in-
clusive), then you’ll pick an integer between 1 and 10 (inclusive), and then I’ll
go again, then you’ll go again, and so on and so forth. We’ll keep adding our
numbers together to make a running total. And whoever makes the running
total greater than or equal to 100 loses. You go first.

Nate: That’s not fair! Whenever I pick a number X, you’ll just pick 11-X,
and then I’ll always get stuck with 99 and I’ll make the total go greater than
100.

Alter: Ok fine. New rule then, no one can pick a number that would make the
sum of that number and the previous number equal to 11. You still go first.
Now can we play?

Nate: Um...sure.

Who wins, and what is their strategy?

12
43 Box packing ***
Can you pack 53 bricks of dimensions 1x1x4 into a 6 x 6 x 6 box?

44 Calender Cubes
You just had two dice custom-made. Instead of numbers 1 - 6, you place single-
digit numbers on the faces of each dice so that every morning you can arrange
the dice in a way as to make the two front faces show the current day of the
month.

You must use both dice (in other words, days 1 - 9 must be shown as 01 -
09), but you can switch the order of the dice if you want. What numbers do
you have to put on the six faces of each of the two dice to achieve that?

45 Quant Salary ***

Eight quants from different banks are getting together for drinks. They are
all interested in knowing the average salary of the group. Nevertheless, being
cautious and humble individuals, everyone prefers not to disclose his or her own
salary to the group. Can you come up with a strategy for the quants to calculate
the average salary without knowing other people’s salaries?

46 Wise Men
A sultan has captured 50 wise men. He has a glass currently standing bottom
down. Every minute he calls one of the wise men who can choose either to tum
it over (set it upside down or bottom down) or do nothing. The wise men will
be called randomly, possibly an infinite number of times. When someone called
to the sultan correctly states that all wise men have already been called to the
sultan at least once, everyone goes free.

But if his statement is wrong, the sultan puts everyone to death. The wise
men are allowed to communicate only once before they get imprisoned in sepa-
rate rooms (one per room).

Design a strategy that lets the wise men go free.

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47 The Pigeon Hole Principle ***
Here is the basic version of the Pigeonhole Principle: if you have fewer pigeon-
holes than pigeons and you put every pigeon in a pigeonhole, then at least one
pigeonhole has more than one pigeon.

In other words, it says that if you have n holes and more than n + 1 pigeons, at
least 2 pigeons have to share one of the holes. The generalized version is that
if you have n holes and at least mn + 1 pigeons, at least m + 1 pigeons have to
share one of the holes. These simple and intuitive ideas are surprisingly useful
in many problems. Here we will use some examples to show their applications.

(a) Matching Socks Your drawer contains 2 red socks, 20 yellow socks, and 31
blue socks. Being a busy and absent-minded MIT student, you just randomly
grab several socks out of the draw and try to find a matching pair. Assuming
each sock has an equal probability of being selected, what is the minimum num-
ber of socks you need to grab in order to guarantee a pair of socks of the same
color?

(b) Handshakes You are invited to a welcome party with 25 fellow team
members. Each of the fellow members shakes hands with you to welcome you.
Since several people in the room haven’t met each other, there’s a lot of ran-
dom handshaking among others as well. If you don’t know the total number
of handshakes, can you say with certainty that there are at least two people
present who shook hands with exactly the same number of people?

(c) Ants on a square There are 51 ants on a square with a side length of
1. If you have a glass with a radius of 1/7, can you put your glass at a position
on the square to guarantee that the glass encompasses at least 3 ants?

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48 Sample with or without Replacement **
Two urns contain red and black balls, all alike except for color. Urn A has 2
reds and 1 black, and Urn B has 101 reds and 100 blacks. An urn is chosen
at random, and you win a prize if you correctly name the urn based on the
evidence of two balls drawn from it. After the first ball is drawn and its color
reported, you can decide whether or not the ball shall be replaced before the
second drawing. How do you order the second drawing, and how do you decide
on the urn?

49 The Ballot Box

In an election, two candidates, Albert and Benjamin, have in a ballot box a
and b votes respectively, a > b, for example, 3 and 2. If ballots are randomly
drawn and tallied, what is the chance that at least once after the first tally the
candidates have the same number of tallies?

50 Ties in Matching Pennies

Players A and B match pennies N times. They keep a tally of their gains and
losses. After the first toss, what is the chance that at no time during the game
will they be even?

51 The Unfair Subway

Marvin gets off work at random times between 3 and 5 P.M. His mother lives
uptown and his girlfriend downtown. He takes the first subway that comes in
either direction and eats dinner with the one he is first delivered to. His mother
complains that he never comes to see her, but he says she has a 50-50 chance.
He has had dinner with her twice in the last 20 working days. Explain.

52 Lengths of Random Chords

If a chord is selected at random on a fixed circle, what is the probability that
its length exceeds the radius of the circle?

15
53 Checking if a coin is Fair
You receive a coin that is either fair (with a 50 % probability of getting heads)
or unfair (with a 42 % probability). How can you detect the fair coin? And
after how many flips can you assuredly say that?

54 Unexpected Number Guessing

Two numbers are randomly chosen from the closed interval [0, 1]. Afterward,
you see the first number. You now must guess if the second, unseen number is
greater or smaller.

Can you find a strategy with more than a 50% probability of winning?

55 Summation until One

You play a game where you sum independent identically distributed uniform
random variables over the interval [0, 1]. The first time the sum exceeds one,
record the count of needed variables.

What is the expected number of variables?

56 Random Variable Comparison **

What is the probability that X is greater than 4Y if:

X, Y independent, standard normally distributed? and X, Y independent, uni-

formly distributed on [0,1]?

57 The Thick Coin

1
How thick should a coin be to have a 3 chance of landing on edge?

16
58 Number Guessing Game ***
You play a game in which you must pick a real number x, between 0 and 924.
At the same time, the number y is uniformly and randomly selected in the same
range.

(a) If x is greater than y, then you have to pay the square of the difference
between the two numbers.

(b) If y is greater than or equal to x, you pay double the difference.

What is the Number you would pick?

59 Dividing a Sphere with Just 5 Cuts

By cutting a sphere with five planes, what is the maximum number of resulting
chunks you can obtain?

60 Winning a Tennis Tournament

Three equally skilled tennis players play in a tournament. After each round, the
winner plays against the third player. The first to reach two consecutive wins
becomes the champion.

If A and B play the first game, what is the probability that C wins the tourna-
ment?

61 Pirate Treasure Division ***

A crew consisting of 3 democratic pirates finds a bounty of 100 coins. The
strongest pirate must propose a split and all pirates vote. If the vote passes,
meaning that it gets at least half the votes, his proposal is accepted If the vote
doesn’t pass, he is killed, and the process is repeated.

Knowing that all pirates possess perfect logic and their priorities are, in or-
der. Surviving, then More Bounty, then More Deaths.

How will the coins end up being split?

17
62 Should you trade a Bouncy Stock **
For a given stock, you are certain that for the next 100 days, it will move either
10% up or 10% down each day (with 50% probability each). You can invest now,
but if you chose to do so, you have to hold it for the entire 100 days. Would
you do so?

63 The Clumsy Chemist

In a laboratory, each of a handful of thin 9-inch glass rods had one tip marked
with a blue dot and the other with a red. When the laboratory assistant tripped
and dropped them onto the concrete floor, many broke into three pieces. For
these, what was the average length of the fragment with the blue dot?

64 The First Ace

Shuffle an ordinary deck of 52 playing cards containing four aces. Then turn up
cards from the top until the first ace appears. On average, how many cards are
required to produce the first ace?

∗∗∗

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