Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 1822

A ticket for a train costs 50 pence, and the penalty for a ticketless trip is 450 pence. If the free rider is discovered by the controller, he pays both the penalty and the ticket price. It is known that the controller finds the free rider on average once out of every 10 trips. The free rider got acquainted with the basics of probability theory and decided to adhere to a strategy that gives the mathematical expectation of spending the smallest possible. How should he act: buy a ticket every time, never buy one, or throw a coin to determine whether he should buy a ticket or not?

Chess board fields are numbered in rows from top to bottom by the numbers from 1 to 64. 6 rooks are randomly assigned to the board, which do not capture each other (one of the possible arrangements is shown in the figure). Find the mathematical expectation of the sum of the numbers of fields occupied by the rooks.

A toy cube is symmetrical, but it’s unusual: two faces have two points, and the other four have one point. Sarah threw the cube several times, and as a result, the sum of all of the points was 3. Find the probability that one throw resulted in the face with 2 points coming up.

The teacher on probability theory leaned back in his chair and looked at the screen. The list of those who signed up is ready. The total number of people turned out to be \(n\). Only they are not in alphabetical order, but in a random order in which they came to the class.

“We need to sort them alphabetically,” the teacher thought, “I’ll go down in order from the top down, and if necessary I’ll rearrange the student’s name up in a suitable place. Each name should be rearranged no more than once”.

Prove that the mathematical expectation of the number of surnames that you do not have to rearrange is \(1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + \dots + 1/n\).

Are there functions \(p (x)\) and \(q (x)\) such that \(p (x)\) is an even function and \(p (q (x))\) is an odd function (different from identically zero)?

10 children were each given a bowl with 100 pieces of pasta. However, these children did not want to eat and instead started to play. One of the children started to place one piece of pasta into every other child’s bowl. What is the least amount of transfers needed so that everyone has a different number of pieces of pasta in their bowl?

100 children were each given a bowl with 100 pieces of pasta. However, these children did not want to eat and instead started to play. One of the children started to place one piece of her pasta into other children’s bowls (to whomever she wants). What is the least amount of transfers needed so that everyone has a different number of pieces of pasta in their bowl?

The function \(f (x)\) is defined for all real numbers, and for any \(x\) the equalities \(f (x + 2) = f (2 - x)\) and \(f (x + 7) = f (7 - x)\) are satisfied. Prove that \(f (x)\) is a periodic function.

A tennis tournament takes place in a sports club. The rules of this tournament are as follows. The loser of the tennis match is eliminated (there are no draws in tennis). The pair of players for the next match is determined by a coin toss. The first match is judged by an external judge, and every other match must be judged by a member of the club who did not participate in the match and did not judge earlier. Could it be that there is no one to judge the next match?

10 children were each given a bowl with 100 pieces of pasta. However, these children did not want to eat and instead started to play. One of the children started to place one piece of pasta into every other child’s bowl. What is the least amount of transfers needed so that everyone has a different number of pieces of pasta in their bowl?