( A wandering tale of 15th century manuscripts and 20th century typesetting, including )

I think that I'm going to give up trying to solve the Hat Problem, though I've come pretty far (for background, see my original description and its follow-up post). I've now solved the N=5 version (with surprising results!), and gotten a pretty good framework around the problem:( My final analysis of the Hat Problem, including a reduction to the Minimum Dominating Set problem, source code for a better program to search for solutions, and an optimal strategy for N=5 )

Yesterday, I wrote about the Hat Problem. I figured out some more late last night, but haven't had a chance to post until now. I cancelled my brute-force program because I figured out the solution to the 4-person version: have 1 person pass all the time, and have the other 3 people pretend it's the 3-person problem. I know this because I got an ( Read more... )

I recently learned about The Hat Puzzle, which is a surprisingly tough little conundrum that goes like this: N people walk into a room and a hat is placed on each person's head. Each hat is either red or blue, and the chances that any given hat is red are 1 in 2. Each person can see the colours of everyone else's hat, but not the colour of their ( Read more... )