There are 9 street lamps along the road. If one of them does not work but the two next to it are still working, then the road service team is not worried about it. But if two lamps in a row do not work then the road service team immediately changes all non-working lamps. Each lamp does not work independently of the others.
a) Find the probability that the next replacement will include changing 4 lights.
b) Find the mathematical expectation of the number of lamps that will have to be changed on the next replacement.
What is the minimum number of \(1\times 1\) squares that need to be drawn in order to get an image of a \(25\times 25\) square divided into 625 smaller 1x1 squares?
What is the smallest number of cells that can be chosen on a \(15\times15\) board so that a mouse positioned on any cell on the board touches at least two marked cells? (The mouse also touches the cell on which it stands.)
There are 40 identical cords. If you set any cord on fire on one side, it burns, and if you set it alight on the other side, it will not burn. Ahmed arranges the cords in the form of a square (see the figure below, each cord makes up a side of a cell). Then, Helen arranges 12 fuses. Will Ahmed be able to lay out the cords in such a way that Helen will not be able to burn all of them?
A box contains 111 red, blue, green, and white marbles. It is known that if we remove 100 marbles from the box, without looking, we will always have removed at least one marble of each colour. What is the minimum number of marbles we need to remove to guarantee that we have removed marbles of 3 different colours?
A box contains 100 red, blue, and white marbles. It is known that if we remove 26 marbles from the box, without looking, we will always have removed at least 10 marbles of one colour. What is the minimum number of marbles we need to remove to guarantee that we have removed 30 marbles of the same colour?
What is the largest number of horses that can be placed on an \(8\times8\) chessboard so that no horse touches more than seven of the others?
Harry thought of two positive numbers \(x\) and \(y\). He wrote down the numbers \(x + y\), \(x - y\), \(xy\) and \(x/y\) on a board and showed them to Sam, but did not say which number corresponded to which operation.
Prove that Sam can uniquely figure out \(x\) and \(y\).
The functions \(f\) and \(g\) are defined on the entire number line and are reciprocal. It is known that \(f\) is represented as a sum of a linear and a periodic function: \(f (x) = kx + h (x)\), where \(k\) is a number, and \(h\) is a periodic function. Prove that \(g\) is also represented in this form.
It is known that \(a > 1\). Is it always true that \(\lfloor \sqrt{\lfloor \sqrt{a}\rfloor }\rfloor = \lfloor \sqrt{4}{a}\rfloor\)?