October 2019

[Batalov]

Who doth molest my contemplation?
Is it your trick to make me ope the door,
That so my sad decrees may fly away,
And all my study be to no effect?

You are deceived: for what I mean to do
See here in bloody lines I have set down;
And what is written shall be executed.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by LaurV

...it was only visible starting with Oct.2, and I bet that when the first update will be done, you will see people who sent solutions before Oct.2...

A bet I lost... They were afraid of me!

But I am watching it closely... If I am not able to solve the puzzles, at least at criticizing I should be very good... hehe, we have a saying, if you can not convince them, confuse them...

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by LaurV

we have a saying, if you can not convince them, confuse them...

Here we say: "If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bull"

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by petrw1

Here we say: "If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bull"

If you can't be good, be colorful. - Pete Conrad

[Dieter]

Has anyone found more than one solution or is there only one with the maximal probability?

[Dieter]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Haha, love that. If I would be him, I would give you a present, a potato or something...

Well, related to the puzzle itself, it is just a little bit more difficult than the last one, but still easy solvable (for example in excel, with a little VBA macro help).

That is because the search space is very small, you only have (unsorted) combinations of 49 taken by 4 (why?), so you can calculate all the 211876 probabilities in minutes. From which you will still need to exclude few possible combinations (like for example, having denominations of 1, 2, 9, 10, is not good, because you can represent 11 in two ways, with two notes each time), so it is even faster (you can do that "by hand" at the end, no need to be included in the algorithm).

Just for fun - for comparison:


If I check the (49 choose 4) = 211876 combinations for the banknotes and if the code shows only the combinations having a bigger probability than the biggest so far (starting with f.e. 1%), I see N combinations - the Nth being the solution.


I don't know, if posting of "N" is spoiling.


The solution can be seen after less than one second, the total computing time is less than 3 seconds.

[SmartMersenne]

Not sure if it is useful but I am seeing higher probabilities if I ignore "uniquely determines the set" part.

[Dieter]

There is no new challenge visible until now? Wed Nov 6 07:18 UTC

[SmartMersenne]

Originally Posted by Dieter

There is no new challenge visible until now? Wed Nov 6 07:18 UTC

I can't see anything either. Have been waiting for one week now. This sucks. Takes away all the fun.

I just hope that guys from IBM can't see it either.

[Dieter]

I have seen the new challenge at 12:45 UCT, but not yet at 12:03 UCT. 7.11.

[Xyzzy]

http://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/po...tober2019.html