A speaker at the conference I was at last week in Vegas used the following puzzle to illustrate a point. I thought you might enjoy it. Post a comment if you think you know the answer. (Usually we turn off comments, but we make an exception for puzzles!) In a few days, I will post a comment with the correct answer if it hasn't already been given.
In bucket A, you have 1000 red marbles. In bucket B, you have 1000 blue marbles. First, you randomly select 20 marbles from bucket A and put them in bucket B and then mix. Then, you randomly select 20 marbles from bucket B and put them in bucket A and mix. Repeat this three times. At the end of the experiment, which bucket will have more foreign colored marbles in it?
And now for the plea. Will you please send me high quality versions of any of the pictures you took at the baby blessing?
1 comment:
The answer is impossible to figure out if you start down the road of calculating probabilities. (That's where I went when I tried to solve the puzzle.) Skip that road and take this easier one.
At the end of the experiment, how many balls will be in each bucket? 1000. That math is easy.
If there are 10 red balls in the blue bucket, how many blue balls were displaced and where are they now?
You can probably see that there will always be exactly the same amount of foreign balls in both buckets. Sneaky!
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