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?
A farmer and his neighbour once went to Emperor Akbar"s court with a complaint. "Your Majesty, I bought a well from him," said the farmer pointing to his neighbour, "and now he wants me to pay for the water."
"That"s right, your Majesty," said the neighbour. "I sold him the well but not the water!"?
The Emperor asked Birbal to settle the dispute. How did Birbal solve the dispute?
It was a dark stormy night and a couple were in a car driving madly to a city. The car broke down and the husband had to go get help from someone who spoke his language. He was afraid to leave his wife alone in the car so he locked the car before leaving. When he came back, the car was in the same state as he had left it but his wife was dead, there was blood on the floor and there was a stranger in the car. What happened?
A man started to town with a fox, a goose, and a sack of corn. He came to a stream which he had to cross in a tiny boat. He could only take one across at a time. He could not leave the fox alone with the goose or the goose alone with the corn. How did he get them all safely over the stream?
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.
