Abstract
This column is a place for those bits of contagious mathematics that travel from person to person in the community, because they are so elegant, suprising, or appealing that one has an urge to pass them on.
Contributions are most welcome.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Bertram Felgenhauer. 100 prisoners and a lightbulb. Newsgroup rec. puzzles, available through http://groups.google.com, July 28 2002.
William Feller.An introduction to probability theory and its applications. Vol. I, pages 46,59. Second edition. John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1968.
Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.Emissary newsletter, November 2002. Also available at http://www.msri.org/publications/ emissary/.
Renata Kallosh and Andrei Linde. Dark energy and the fate of the universe. 2003. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0301087.
“Oleg”. 100 prisoners and a lightbulb. Newsgroup rec.puzzles, available through http://groups.google.com, July 24 2002.
National Public Radio. Car Talk Radio Show. Transcription available at http:// cartalk.cars.com/Radio/Puzzler/Transcripts/ 200306/index.html
IBM Research. Ponder This Challenge. http://domino.watson.ibm.com/Comm/ wwwr_ponder.nsf/challenges/July2002.html, July 2002.
William Wu. Hard riddles, http://www.ocf. berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/hard.shtml #100prisonersLightBulb, February 2002.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dehaye, PO., Ford, D. & Segerman, H. One hundred prisoners and a lightbulb. The Mathematical Intelligencer 25, 53–61 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02984862
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02984862