Quote:
Originally Posted by Stitchawl
... only in math problems can there be five people in a room, all wearing hats, and none of them knowing the color of their own hat!
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I agree. When I took math at high school (or rather, the Norwegian equivalent of high school) we had a problem involving dressing in the morning when the lights are out. The person dressing drew clothes blindly out of a drawer with n socks, m underpants, etc. How many combinations were there? What was the possibility of drawing socks that matched, and what was the possibility of drawing a jacket that matched the trousers.
I suggested that we rather calculated the possibility of a power breach, AND not having any candles in the house AND it was dark outside (this must have been in the two months of winter) GIVEN that it was not a week-end. What would the possibility of these conditions have been...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stitchawl
Isn't that a little strange? All my hats are the same color. It makes life so much easier, especially if I get stuck in a room with four other people and told I can't leave until I know my own hat color.
Besides knowing where your towel is, it's a good idea to know the color of your hat.
Stitchawl
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Who said it was their own hat? Who knows, they could have been to a party and wearing party hats. The light could have gone out when they put on their party-hats so they couldn't see it. And a lunatic mathematician with guns could have taken all of them hostage and given them the ultimate challenge: leaving the room without knowing the color of your hat is punishable by death... Anything is possible in this world, even not knowing the color of ones hat.
The possibility of that is maybe equal (if not bigger) than having to dress blindly in the dark without having any light sources in the house available to you. Mathematicians are a strange species...
Maybe the next generation teachers will be more realistic? Say, what is the possibility of that
