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?

is the answer 4 as you can draw 2 from 1 box. if they r both black then u no that box is BB. u can draw 1 from another box if it is black u no that box is BW and the othr is WW. but if the 3rd ball is white u need to draw another ball from that box to determine which is which. this also works if u have a dif. combo 2 srart with.

Posted by Gale on 2003-02-28 10:56:25