A girl was sitting in her hotel room when she heard a knock on the door. She opened the door and found that a man was standing outside. The man said, "Oh! I am really sorry, I thought this was my room." He then walked through the corridor to the elevator. The girl did not know the man. She closed her door and called security asking them to apprehend the man. What made her suspicious of that man? He might have been genuinely mistaken.
How many people must be gathered together in a room, before you can be certain that there is a greater than 50/50 chance that at least two of them have the same birthday?
There is a box in which distinct numbered balls have been kept. You have to pick two balls randomly from the lot.
If someone is offering you a 2 to 1 odds that the numbers will be relatively prime, for example
If the balls you picked had the numbers 6 and 13, you lose $1.
If the balls you picked had the numbers 5 and 25, you win $2.
In 2011, people playing Foldit, an online puzzle game about protein folding, resolved the structure of an enzyme that causes an Aids-like disease in monkeys. Researchers had been working on the problem for 13 years. The gamers solved it in three weeks.
