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Names in Boxes (Posted on 2017-04-09) Difficulty: 3 of 5
The names of 100 prisoners are placed in 100 wooden boxes, one name to a box, and the boxes are lined up on a table in a room. One by one, the prisoners are led into the room; each may look in at most 50 boxes, but must leave the room exactly as he found it and is permitted no further communication with the others.
The prisoners have a chance to plot their strategy in advance, and they are going to need it, because unless every single prisoner finds his own name all will subsequently be executed.
Find a strategy for them which has probability of success exceeding 30%.

Comment: If each prisoner examines a random set of 50 boxes, their probability of survival is an unenviable 1/2100 ∼ 0.0000000000000000000000000000008. They could do worse—if they all look in the same 50 boxes, their chances drop to zero. 30% seems ridiculously out of reach—but yes, you heard the problem correctly!

No Solution Yet Submitted by Ady TZIDON    
Rating: 4.0000 (5 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
Some Thoughts Thoughts | Comment 1 of 15
With two people, each choosing one box:
As per the comment, if they both choose randomly, their probability of survival is only 1/2^2 = 0.25 but they can do better.
If they decide beforehand that the first person will check the first box and the second will chose the other their probability rises to 0.5

Trying four people, each choosing two boxes:
If 
person 1 checks boxes 1 and 2
person 2 checks boxes 2 and 3
person 3 checks boxes 3 and 4 and
person 4 checks boxes 4 and 1
they have a 2/24 chance of surviving, which is slightly better than 1/2^4
The safe permutations are {1234, 4123}
Maybe some other checking scheme will improve on this.

Incidentally, I wouldn't be surprised if increasing the number of people makes the probability approach 1/e = .368

  Posted by Jer on 2017-04-10 15:31:03
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