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A birthday gamble (Posted on 2002-05-28) Difficulty: 3 of 5
For Cathy's birthday, her uncle decided to make her a deal. He took ten singles and ten one hundred dollar bills, and asked Cathy to divide them into two piles as she saw fit. He would then blindfold her, and thoroughly shuffle each pile of bills, so that the order was completely random. Finally, he would put each pile in a separate box.

Cathy is to pick one of the two boxes at random, and then pick out a random bill from that box (still blindfolded). She would get to keep whatever bill she pulls out.

Naturally, Cathy prefers to get a $100 bill. What strategy should she use in breaking up the bills into two piles to maximize her chance of getting a hundred?

  Submitted by levik    
Rating: 3.5000 (8 votes)
Solution: (Hide)
Since there's no way to affect the box Cathy will pick, in order to maximize her odds of finding the $100, she has to maximize the odds of finding it in each box separately.

The biggest chance to find $100 in a box (100%) can only occur if there is nothing in that box but $100s. However, the more $100s we put into one box, the lower the chance of finding $100 will be in the other.

Thus it would be prudent for Cathy to put one $100 bill into one box, and put everyhting else into the other box.

This way the odds of "victory" for box 1 are 100% and the odds for box 2 are 9/19, or 47.4%, with the overall chance of victory at 73.7%

Comments: ( You must be logged in to post comments.)
  Subject Author Date
re(2): Puzzle SolutionK Sengupta2022-01-02 18:09:45
re: Puzzle SolutionCharlie2022-01-02 15:20:55
SolutionPuzzle SolutionK Sengupta2022-01-02 01:56:05
Some ThoughtsPlurals cautionGamer2003-04-21 13:55:12
I am going to do thiscges2002-12-17 05:54:11
proofTomM2002-05-29 03:31:25
I agreeHalf-Mad2002-05-28 18:48:18
solutionTomM2002-05-28 07:01:26
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