Imagine that you have three boxes, one containing two black balls, one containing two white balls, and the third containing one black ball and one white ball.

The boxes were originally labelled for their contents (BB - WW - BW) but someone has inadvertently switched the labels so that now every box is incorrectly labelled.

Without looking inside, you are allowed to take one ball at a time out of any box that you wish, and by this process of sampling, you are to determine the contents of all three boxes.

What is the smallest number of drawings needed to do this?

(In reply to I believe it to be... by Lucifer)

hey what happens if the balls pulled out are one black and one white.......still then you can arrive at a result....i know........but the sad news for you is that this is not the answer............

Posted by Ravi Raja on 2003-02-27 20:17:43