The U.S. Open is upon us! Dave Moran and Erich Friedman each submitted a tennis-themed puzzle that asked what it really takes to succeed in the tournament. Suppose you’re playing a match at the U.S. Open, and you’re slightly better than the competition: your chances of winning any given point are exactly 55 percent. (Yes, …
Our friend Mac likes to eat ice-cream so much that he started to work in an ice-cream parlor. Satisfied by his work, the ice-cream owner gave him 10 different kind of ice-cream each 2 in quantity(20 ice-creams in total). Mac have gone crazy so much that he brought a fair 10 sided dice and devised …
Thursday, May 30 Game 1 Warriors 27% Raptors -6 73% Raptors win Sunday, June 2 Game 2 Warriors 31% Raptors -5 69% Warriors win Wednesday, June 5 Game 3 Raptors 40% Warriors -2.5 60% Update: line moved to warriors -0.5 (51%) Friday, June 7 Game 4 Raptors 37% Warriors -3 63% Update: line moved to …
You are playing a game with a fair six-sided die. If you roll a number greater than 1, then you win that many gold coins. For example, if you roll a 5, then you win 5 gold coins. If you roll a 1, then you lose half of your money. You start this dice game …
At a pivotal moment in an epic battle between the living and the dead, the Night King, head of the army of the dead, raises all the fallen (formerly) living soldiers to join his ranks. This ability obviously presents a huge military advantage, but how big an advantage exactly? Forget the Battle of Winterfell and …
Original text: Five brothers join the Riddler Baseball Independent Society, or RBIs. Each of them enjoys a lengthy career of 20 seasons, with 160 games per season and four plate appearances per game. (To make this simple, assume each plate appearance results in a hit or an out, so there are no sac flies or …
Original Question: Assume you have a sport (let’s call it “baseball”) in which each team plays 162 games in a season. Assume you have a division of five teams (call it the “AL East”) where each team is of exact equal ability. Specifically, each team has a 50 percent chance of winning each game. What is …