This repository is used to keep track of my work on the math, probability, and logic puzzles from FiveThirtyEight.
The Riddler is a weekly column over at FiveThirtyEight that offers math, logic, and probability puzzles. Every Friday there is a new "Express" and "Classic" puzzle. Express puzzles are intended to be relatively quick to solve, while the Classic problems are more challenging.
An example puzzle titled Can You Flip Your Way to Freedom?:
You are locked in the dungeon of a faraway castle with three fellow prisoners (i.e., there are four prisoners in total),
each in a separate cell with no means of communication. But it just so happens that all of you are logicians (of course).
To entertain themselves, the guards have decided to give you all a single chance for immediate release.
Each prisoner will be given a fair coin, which can either be fairly flipped one time or returned to the guards without being flipped.
If all flipped coins come up heads, you will all be set free! But if any of the flipped coins comes up tails, or if no one chooses
to flip a coin, you will all be doomed to spend the rest of your lives in the castle’s dungeon.
The only tools you and your fellow prisoners have to aid you are random number generators,
which will give each prisoner a random number, uniformly and independently chosen between zero and one.
What are your chances of being released?
My solution to the example problem above can be viewed here.