Probability

Puzzles

1. Stacy has twelve black socks and twelve white socks in her drawer. In
complete darkness, and without looking, how many socks must she take from the
drawer in order to be sure to get a pair that match?
2. A team of three people decide on a strategy for playing the following game. Each
player walks into a room. On the way in, a fair coin is tossed for each player,
deciding that player’s hat color, either red or blue. Each player can see the hat
colors of the other two players, but cannot see her own hat color. After inspecting
each other’s hat colors, each player decides on a response, one of: “I have a red
hat”, “I had a blue hat”, or “I pass”. The responses are recorded, but the responses
are not shared until every player has recorded her response. The team wins if at
least one player responds with a color and every color response correctly describes
the hat color of the player making the response. In other words, the team loses if
either everyone responds with “I pass” or someone responds with a color that is
different from her hat color.
What strategy should one use to maximize the team’s expected chance of winning?
For example, one possible strategy is to single out one of the three players. This
player will respond “I have a red hat” and the others will respond “I pass”. The
expected chance of winning with this strategy is 50%. Can you do better? Provide a
better strategy or prove that no better strategy exists.
3. People are waiting in line to board a 100-seat airplane. Steve is the first person in the
line. He gets on the plane but suddenly can’t remember what his seat number is, so
he picks a seat at random. After that, each person who gets on the plane sits in their
assigned seat if it’s available, otherwise they will choose an open seat at random to
sit in.
The flight is full and you are last in line. What is the probability that you get to sit in
your assigned seat?
4. In a country,
All families want a boy. They keep having babies till a boy is born.
What is the expected ratio of boys and girls in the country?
5. This is a popular probability puzzle in which you have to select the correct answer at
random from the four options below.
Can you tell, what’s the probability of choosing correct answer in this random
manner.
1) 1/4
2) 1/2
3) 1
4) 1/4

IIM Visakhapatnam Decision Sciences - 1 Anirban Ghatak