Baron Munchhausen Redeems Himself : Bounds for a Coin-Weighing Puzzle Background

• Published in 2010
• Added on 2011-10-14

We investigate a coin-weighing puzzle that appeared in the Moscow Math Olympiad in 1991. We generalize the puzzle by varying the number of participating coins, and deduce an upper bound on the number of weighings needed to solve the puzzle that is noticeably better than the trivial upper bound. In particular, we show that logarithmically-many weighings on a balance suffice.

Links

• http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.4135v1
• http://arxiv.org/pdf/1006.4135v1

Other information

BibTeX entry

@article{Khovanova2010,
	key = {Khovanova2010},
	type = {article},
	title = {Baron Munchhausen Redeems Himself : Bounds for a Coin-Weighing Puzzle Background},
	author = {Khovanova, Tanya and Lewis, Joel Brewster},
	abstract = {We investigate a coin-weighing puzzle that appeared in the Moscow Math Olympiad in 1991. We generalize the puzzle by varying the number of participating coins, and deduce an upper bound on the number of weighings needed to solve the puzzle that is noticeably better than the trivial upper bound. In particular, we show that logarithmically-many weighings on a balance suffice.},
	comment = {},
	date_added = {2011-10-14},
	date_published = {2010-12-07},
	urls = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.4135v1,http://arxiv.org/pdf/1006.4135v1},
	collections = {Attention-grabbing titles,Puzzles},
	url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.4135v1 http://arxiv.org/pdf/1006.4135v1},
	archivePrefix = {arXiv},
	arxivId = {arXiv:1006.4135v1},
	eprint = {arXiv:1006.4135v1},
	pages = {1--19},
	year = 2010,
	urldate = {2011-10-14}
}