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)

you are stupid it is obviosly 1. Just take a ball from the box labled BW if it is black label the box BB if white label WW then just switch the other two around because they are both wrong and the only other option is to switch them

Posted by Nich on 2003-06-10 08:06:40