## Le Monde puzzle [#1045]

Posted in Books, Kids with tags , , , , , , on May 13, 2018 by xi'an

An minor arithmetic Le Monde mathematical puzzle:

Take a sequence of 16  integers with 4 digits each, separated by 2,  such that it contains a perfect square and its sum is a perfect cube. What are the possible squares and cubes?

The question is dead easy to code in R

for (x in as.integer(1e3:(1e4-16))){
if (max(round(sqrt(x+2*(0:15)))^2==x+2*(0:15))==1) {
b=sqrt((x+2*(0:15))[round(sqrt(x+2*(0:15)))^2==x+2*(0:15)])
if ((round((2*x+30)^(1/3)))^3==(2*x+30))
print(c(x,b,(16*(x+15))^(1/3)))}}


and return the following solutions:

[1] 1357   37   28
[1] 5309   73   44


Nothing that exciting…!

## Le Monde puzzle [#1044]

Posted in Books, Kids with tags , , , , , , on March 12, 2018 by xi'an

A dynamic programming Le Monde mathematical puzzle:

Bob and Alice are playing a game where Alice fills a one-litre bottle from a water fountain, and empties it between four buckets. Bob then empties two of the four buckets. Alice then fills again her bottle and empties it again in the buckets. Alice wins if she manages to fill one bucket after a finite number of steps. What is the maximum capacity of a bucket for Alice to find a winning strategy?

The question sounded too complex to solve by an R code so I somewhat simplified it by deciding that Alice could not allocate any portion of the litre to a bucket but instead only 0,¼,⅓,½,⅔,¾,1. And then looked at a finite horizon to see how much she could fill a bucket when Bob was trying to minimise this amount: a crude R code just took too long for an horizon of 6 steps and hence I tried to reduce the number of calls to my recursive function

solfrak=c(0,.25,.333,.5,.667,.75,1)
petifil=function(buck=rep(0,4),hor=3){
#eliminate duplicates
albukz=NULL
for (a in solfrak)
for (b in solfrak[!(solfrak+a>1)])
for (c in solfrak[!(solfrak+a+b>1)]){
if (a+b+c<=1){ albukz=rbind(albukz,
c(a,b,c,1-a-b-c))}}
albukz=t(apply(buck+albukz,1,sort))
albukz=albukz[!duplicated(albukz),]
if (is.matrix(albukz)){
bezt=max(apply(albukz,1,petimpty,hor=hor-1))
}else{
bezt=petimpty(albukz,hor-1)}
return(bezt)}

petimpty=function(buck,hor){
if (hor>1){
albukz=NULL
for (i in 1:3)
for (j in (i+1):4)
albukz=rbind(albukz,c(buck[-c(i,j)],0,0))
albukz=t(apply(albukz,1,sort))
albukz=albukz[!duplicated(albukz),]
if (is.matrix(albukz)){
bezt=min(apply(albukz,1,petifil,hor))}else{
bezt=petifil(albukz,hor)}
}else{
bezt=sort(buck)[2]+1}
return(bezt)}


which led to a most surprising outcome:

> petifil(hor=2)
[1] 1.333
> petifil(hor=3)
[1] 1.5
> petifil(hor=4)
[1] 1.5
> petifil(hor=5)
[1] 1.5


that is no feasible strategy to beat the value 1.5 liters. Which actually stands way below two liters, the maximum content of the bucket produced in the solution!

## Le Monde puzzle [#1033]

Posted in Books, Kids, R with tags , , , , on December 19, 2017 by xi'an

A simple Le Monde mathematical puzzle after two geometric ones I did not consider:

1. Bob gets a 2×3 card with three integer entries on the first row and two integer entries on the second row such that (i) entry (1,1) is 1, (ii) summing up subsets of adjacent entries produces all integers from 1 to 21. (Adjacent means sharing an index.) Deduce Bob’s voucher.
2.  Alice gets Bob’s voucher completed into a 2×4 card with further integer entries. What is the largest value of N such that all integers from 1 to N are available through summing up all subsets of entries?

The first question only requires a few attempts but it can be solves by brute force simulation. Here is a R code that leads to the solution:

alsumz<-function(sol){return(
c(sol,sum(sol[1:2]),sum(sol[2:3]),sum(sol[4:5]),
sum(sol[c(1,4)]), sum(sol[c(1,5)]),sum(sol[1:3]),
sum(sol[c(1,4,5)]),sum(sol[c(1,2,5)]),
sum(sol[c(2,4,5)]), sum(sol[c(1,2,3,5)]),sum(sol[2:5]),
sum(sol[c(1,2,4)]),sum(sol[c(1,2,4,5)]),sum(sol[1:4]),
sum(sol)),sum(sol[c(2,3,5)]))}


produces (1,8,7,3,2) as the only case for which

(length(unique(alsum(sol)))==21)


The second puzzle means considering all sums and checking there exists a solution for all subsets. There is no constraint in this second question, hence on principle this could produce N=2⁸-1=255, but I have been unable to exceed 175 through brute force simulation. (Which entitled me to use the as.logical(intToBits(i) R command!)

## Le Monde puzzle [#1019]

Posted in Books, Kids with tags , , , , , , on September 7, 2017 by xi'an

A gamey (and verbose) Le Monde mathematical puzzle:

A two-player game involves n+2 cards in a row, blue on one side and red on the other. Each player can pick any blue card among the n first ones and flip it plus both following ones. The game stops when no blue card is left to turn. The gain for the last player turning cards is 20-t, where t is the number of times cards were flipped, with gain t for its opponent. Both players aim at maximising their gain.

1. When n=4 and all cards are blue, can the first player win? If not, what is the best score for this player?

2. Among all 16 configurations at start, how many lead to the first player to win?

3. When n=10 and all cards are blue, how many cards are flipped an odd number of times for the winning configuration?

The first two questions can easily be processed by an R code like the following recursive function:

liplop <- function(x,n,i){
if (max(x[1:n])==0){
return(i)
}else{
sol=NULL
for (j in (1:n)[x[1:n]==1]){
y=x;y[j:(j+2)]=1-y[j:(j+2)]
sol=c(sol,20-liplop(y,n,i+1))}
return(max(sol))}}


Returning

> liplop(rep(1,6),4,0)
[1] 6


Meaning the first player cannot win, by running at most six rounds. Calling the same function for all 4⁴=16 possible configurations leads to 8 winning ones:

[1] 0 0 0 1
[1] 0 0 1 1
[1] 0 1 0 1
[1] 0 1 1 1
[1] 1 0 0 0
[1] 1 0 1 0
[1] 1 1 0 0
[1] 1 1 1 0


Solving the same problem with n=10 is not feasible with this function. (Even n=6 seems out of reach!)

## Le Monde puzzle [#1000…1025]

Posted in Kids, R with tags , , , , , , on March 28, 2017 by xi'an

Le Monde mathematical puzzle launched a competition to celebrate its 1000th puzzle! A fairly long-term competition as it runs over the 25 coming puzzles (and hence weeks). Starting with puzzle #1001. Here is the 1000th puzzle, not part of the competition:

Alice & Bob spend five (identical) vouchers in five different shops, each time buying the maximum number of items to get close to the voucher value. In these five shops, they buy sofas at 421 euros each, beds at 347 euros each, kitchen appliances at 289 euros each, tables at 251 euros each and bikes at 211 euros each, respectively. Once the buying frenzy is over, they realise that within a single shop, they would have spent exactly four vouchers for the same products. What is the value of a voucher?

## going to war [a riddle]

Posted in Books, Kids, Statistics with tags , , , , , on December 16, 2016 by xi'an

On the Riddler this week, a seemingly obvious riddle:

A game consists of Alice and Bob, each with a $1 bill, receiving a U(0,1) strength each, unknown to the other, and deciding or not to bet on this strength being larger than the opponent’s. If no player bets, they both keep their$1 bill. Else, the winner leaves with both bills. Find the optimal strategy.

As often when “optimality” is mentioned, the riddle is unclear because, when looking at the problem from a decision-theoretic perspective, the loss function of each player is not defined in the question. But the St. Petersburg paradox shows the type of loss clearly matters and the utility of money is anything but linear for large values, as explained by Daniel Bernoulli in 1738 (and later analysed by Laplace in his Essai Philosophique).  Let us assume therefore that both players live in circumstances when losing or winning \$1 makes little difference, hence when the utility is linear. A loss function attached to the experiment for Alice [and a corresponding utility function for Bob] could then be a function of (a,b), the result of both Uniform draws, and of the decisions δ¹ and δ² of both players as being zero if δ¹=δ²=0 and

$L(a,b,\delta^1,\delta^2)=\begin{cases}0&\text{if }\delta^1=\delta^2=0\\\mathbb{I}(ab)&\text{else}\\\end{cases}$

Considering this loss function, Alice aims at minimising the expected loss by her choice of δ¹, equal to zero or one, expected loss that hence depends  on the unknown and simultaneous decision of Bob. If for instance Alice assumes Bob takes the decision to compete when observing an outcome b larger than a certain bound α, her decision is based on the comparison of (when B is Uniform (0,1))

$\mathbb{P}(a\alpha)-\mathbb{P}(a>B,B>\alpha)=2(1-a\vee\alpha)-(1-\alpha)$

(if δ¹=0) and of 1-2a (if δ¹=1). Comparing both expected losses leads to Alice competing (δ¹=1) when a>α/2.

However, there is no reason Alice should know the value of α when playing the (single) game and so she may think that Bob will follow the same reasoning, leading him to choosing a new bound of α/4, and, by iterating the thought process, down all the way to α=0!  So this modelling leads to always play the game, with each player having a ½ probability to win… Alternatively, Alice may set a prior on α, which leads to another bound on a for playing or not the game. Which in itself is not satisfactory either. (The published solution is following the above argument. Except for posting the maths expressions.)

## Le Monde puzzle [#954]

Posted in Kids, R with tags , , , , , , on March 25, 2016 by xi'an

A square Le Monde mathematical puzzle:

Given a triplet (a,b,c) of integers, with a<b<c, it satisfies the S property when a+b, a+c, b+c, a+b+c are perfect squares such that a+c, b+c, and a+b+c are consecutive squares. For a given a, is it always possible to find a pair (b,c) such (a,b,c) satisfies S? Can you find the triplet (a,b,c) that produces the sum a+b+c closest to 1000?

This is a rather interesting challenge and a brute force resolution does not produce interesting results. For instance, using the function is.whole from the package Rmpfr, the R functions

ess <- function(a,b,k){
#assumes a<b<k
ess=is.whole(sqrt(a+b))&
is.whole(sqrt(b+k))&
is.whole(sqrt(a+k))&
is.whole(sqrt(a+b+k))
mezo=is.whole(sqrt(c((a+k+1):(b+k-1),(b+k+1):(a+b+k-1))))
return(ess&(sum(mezo==0)))
}


and

quest1<-function(a){
b=a+1
while (b<1000*a){
if (is.whole(sqrt(a+b))){
k=b+1
while (k<100*b){
if (is.whole(sqrt(a+k))&is.whole(b+k))
if (ess(a,b,k)) break()
k=k+1}}
b=b+1}
return(c(a,b,k))
}


do not return any solution when a=1,2,3,4,5

Looking at the property that a+b,a+c,b+c, and a+b+c are perfect squares α²,β²,γ², and δ². This implies that

a=(δ+γ)(δ-γ), b=(δ+β)(δ-β), and c=(δ+α)(δ-α)

with 1<α<β<γ<δ. If we assume β²,γ², and δ² consecutive squares, this means β=γ-1 and δ=γ+1, hence

a=2γ+1, b=4γ, and c=(γ+1+α)(γ+1-α)

which leads to only two terms to examine. Hence writing another R function

abc=function(al,ga){
a=2*ga+1
b=4*ga
k=(ga+al+1)*(ga-al+1)
return(c(a,b,k))}


and running a check for the smallest values of α and γ leads to the few solutions available:

> for (ga in 3:1e4)
for(al in 1:(ga-2))
if (ess(abc(al,ga))) print(abc(al,ga))
[1] 41 80 41 320
[1] 57 112 672
[1] 97 192 2112
[1] 121 240 3360
[1] 177 352 7392
[1] 209 416 10400
[1] 281 560 19040
[1] 321 640 24960
[1] 409 816 40800
[1] 457 912 51072