You're trapped in a maze. There is a way out. Path junctions are all 3-way.

If you use the strategy of always taking the path going right, what will happen?

(Note: This problem is deliberarely vague.)

I now see where your thinking was going, and it works (more-or-less) as a good approximation to the odds when you have no idea of the structure of the maze, and thus no idea what the terms I labeled O and P are.

However, Friedlinguini's analysis of the odds show that the term you dismissed as negligible actually isn't quite, no matter how small it becomes, and that the odds always favor (even if only slightly) your getting out.

Posted by TomM on 2002-07-02 05:52:15