I was walking along the road one day when I spied a cord of some sort lying in my path. From my vantage point, as I was approaching the cord, I could not tell if it was knotted or not.
What is the probability that the cord was knotted?
(In reply to
Answer by K Sengupta)
The table below lists the eight possible scenerios and whether or not the cord is knotted:
| 1 2 3 | Knot / Not
---+-----------+------------
1 | O O O | N
2 | O O U | N
3 | O U O | K
4 | O U U | N
5 | U O O | N
6 | U O U | K
7 | U U O | N
8 | U U U | N
As can be seen, there are eight possible ways the cord could be lying and in only two of the eight is the cord knotted. Therefore, the probability that the cord is a knot is 2/8 or 25%.
Puzzle Solution
