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?

What do you mean two is not the answer? you cant pull out only one! the only other possiblity is that you go and find the person who switched the labels and ask him/her where the labels orginaly went. Making the number of drawings 0. But that would make this a riddle then. Wouldnt it...

Posted by Lucifer on 2003-02-28 12:30:50