You receive a strange letter stating the following:

You are one of 20 logicians worldwide to receive this letter. You don't know each other, but you all think alike. An address is given, and you are told that if a letter is received from one and only one of you, all 20 will equally split a large sum of money. If no letters are received, or more than one, no prize.

What would you to for a chance of winning the prize? What could you do in order to maximise the probability of winning?

I love the idea of all going to the address, but I would like to believe that all of us logicians are pretty skeptical and are not willing to incur the costs of the trip on such a mysterious scenario. I also like the die rolling randomizer.  I think that we can also let the post office system be another randomizer.  By giving insufficient postage and/or misspelling the address, we can ensure that an appropriate percentage of the letters sent are not delivered, misdelivered, or returned to sender.  I am not sure how we might get our expected outcome of successfully delivered letters to be 1, but there may be some statistic out there on the frequency with which the post office returns letters based on insufficient postage.  

Posted by Eric on 2005-04-29 02:26:44