Duelling Idiots and Other Probability Puzzlers Book

Acknowledgments ix

Preface xi

Introduction 3

The Problems 15

1. How to ask an Embarrassing question 15

2. When Idiots duel 16

3. Will the light Bulb glow? 22

4. Tho Underdog and the World Series 26

5. The Curious Case of the Snowy Birthdays 27

6. When Human Flesh Begins to Fail 34

7. Baseball Again, and Mortal Flesh Too 51

8. Ball Madness 56

9. Who Pays for the Coffee? 42

10. The Chess Champ versus the Gunslinger 45

11. A Different Slice of Probabilistic Pi 49

12. When Negativity is a No-No 50

15. The Power of Randomness 51

14. The Random Radio 52

15. An Inconceivable Difficulty 55

16. The Unsinkable Tub is Sinking! How to Find Her, Fast 57

17. A Walk in the Garden 58

18. Two Flies Stuck on a Piece of Flypaper—How Far Apart? 61

19.The Blind Spider and the Fly 62

20. Reliably Unreliable 68

21. When Theory Fails, There is always the Computer 71

The Solutions 81

Random Number Generators 176

"Some things Just Have to be Done By Hand!" 198

MATLAB Programs 202

Index 267

About the Author 271