Baron Munchhausen Redeems Himself: Bounds for a Coin-Weighing Puzzle
Author(s)
Khovanova, Tanya; Lewis, Joel Brewster
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We investigate a coin-weighing puzzle that appeared in the 1991 Moscow Math Olympiad. 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.
Date issued
2011-02Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of MathematicsJournal
Electronic Journal of Combinatorics
Publisher
Electronic Journal of Combinatorics
Citation
Khovanova, Tanya, and Joel Brewster Lewis. "Baron Munchhausen Redeems Himself: Bounds for a Coin-Weighing Puzzle." Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, Volume 18, Issue 1 (2011).
Version: Final published version
ISSN
1077-8926