Monday Math Madness!

Special Thanks to this week’s Sponsor, Mensa!

Mensa

Before we introduce the problem for this week, we would like to take some time to thank our great sponsor, Mensa.

Mensa is the largest, oldest, and most famous high-IQ society in the world. The non-profit organization restricts its membership to people with high testable IQs. Members must score at the 98th percentile or higher of a standardized, supervised intelligence test.

The people at Mensa have provided Blinkdagger with a bunch of books that range from crossword puzzles, sudoku puzzles, and even a casino gambling guide! We will be handing out these books as the prizes for this contest. For the international participants, we are still offering the 10 dollar gift certificate to Amazon. See the Rules sections for more details! Without further ado . . . let the games begin!

twisted crossswordscasinocrosswords
logic puzzlessudoku

The Problem Statement

One Monday morning, Nelson and his two identical brothers are scouring the streets of Springfield, looking to beat up some helpless kids for their lunch money. Their favorite target is a particular student named Martin, as he always has at least 20 dollars on him. On one memorable occasion, Martin also had a couple of 10 dollar gift certificates that he won from some lame math contest.

There are three paths that one can take to get to Springfield Elementary School. If Nelson and his brothers had any intelligence, they would each occupy a different path so that their chances of beating up Martin would be 100%. But since Nelson and his identical brothers are not too bright, they randomly (and independently) choose a path to occupy. Thus, it is possible that all three brothers could end up on one path, leaving the other two vacant.

On average, what is the % chance of Martin making it to school safely?

The Rules

  1. Email your answers to mondaymathmadness at gmail dot com.

  2. The winner will get to choose from the collection of literature provided by Mensa. The number of winners will depend on the number of total submissions received

  3. Depending on how many submissions we receive, we will be giving out additional prizes, giving you yet more chances to win. We’d also like to give a prize out to the “best” or “most creative” answer. These prizes will consist of a 10 dollar gift certificate to Amazon.com or this spiffy Rubik’s Cube (the cube is only available to US participants and is not the traditional rubik’s cube that we all grew up with).

    Rubik's Cube

  4. Inelgible for any one person to win more than once per year. But you should still submit your answer!

  5. Answer must be explained. You must show your work! We will accept answers in the form of a MATLAB script as well. We will be the final judge on whether an answer was properly explained or not.

  6. The deadline to submit answers is June 17th 2008, Tuesday 12:00 AM Pacific Standard Time

  7. The winners will be chosen randomly from all the submittals using a random number generator.

  8. The winner will be announced at 9:00 AM PST June 20th, 2008.

  9. Comments for this post should only be used to clarify the problem. Please do not discuss ANY potential solutions.

  10. Please spread the word about our contest by stumbling this webpage!