There are 1000 bottles of wine and you know that there is exactly one of them that is poisonous, and will kill the drinker in 7 days. (To be precise, it will take randomly from 7 days to 7 days 23 hr 59 min 59 sec.) Now you have 10 testers who are willing to risk their lives and test-drink those wines. What is the smallest number of days you need to figure out which bottle contains the poisonous wine?
In addition, under this strategy, what is the maximum and minimum number of deaths?
The extension to this problem is, how will your strategy change if you only have 9 testers?
(In reply to
Real Solution by vertigo)
The problem states (To be precise, it will take randomly from 7 days to 7 days 23 hr 59 min 59 sec.) for a poisoned tester to die.<br>
Day 1 Time 00:00:00 All testers drink wine from the allocated 100 bottles. This would take a considerable amount of time but let’s say they were really quick and managed all 100 sips in 5 minutes.<br>
Day 1 Time 00:04:59 A tester drinks the last sip from the poisoned bottle.<br>
Day 8 Time 00:04:59 thru Day 9 Time 00:04:58 All those testers who tasted the poisoned wine die somewhere in this 23 hr 59 min 59 sec period. So the last tester could die on day 9.<br>
As the problem asked , (What is the smallest number of days you need to figure out which bottle contains the poisonous wine?), I think you need a minimum of 9 days.<br>
Having said all this (and if I am correct), it is still Vertigo who came up with the solution. No kudos to me, all to him (or her).
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Posted by Nosher
on 2005-03-03 02:15:45 |
re: Real Solution
