At flooble there are 40 problems in the queue. (this may not be true but lets just pretend it is.) A few crazy hackers somehow manage to promote themselves to scholars. On the first day the first hacker will vote thumbs up on all problems displayed.(The 10 most recent) On the second day the second hacker votes thumbs down on every second problem. On the third day the third hacker votes thumbs up on every third problem. And so on and so on. (When it gets to the eleventh day the eleventh hacker will do what the first hacker did)

How many days will it take for every problem in the queue to be live on the site?

Note: For those who don't know there are only 10 problems that can be voted thumbs up or thumbs down every day and these problems are the 10 least recent. Also a problem with three thumbs up will be posted to the site and taken out of queue. Only one problem can be posted to the site per day. Also if a problem gets 3 thumbs down it is deleted.

Btw: for those who like an extra challenge what if one problem is submitted every 3 days?

Also: A hacker will always vote before a problem becomes live.

(In reply to To restate everything by Alan)

In my simulation described in a previous comment, on day 30 I have as statuses 1, 1, 2, -2, 1, -1, 2, -2, 1, 0 and 6 problems posted thus far.

Problems had been posted on days 9, 11 and 13 with the situation looking like this (X=-1, Y=-2, posts shown once, then removed)-- 3 in the first 20 days. Any comments on this Alan?:
1 1111111111qqqq
2 1010101010qqqq
3 1020111020qqqq
4 102X111X20qqqq
5 102X211X21qqqq
6 102X201X21qqqq
7 102X202X21qqqq
8 102X202Y21qqqq
9 102X202YP10qqq
10 102X202Y1Xqqqq
11 21P0313X200qqq
12 200212X10Xqqqq
13 20121PX11X0qqq
14 20111X10X0qqqq

Posted by Charlie on 2003-03-04 03:58:33