Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 A day at the races
- 2 The long run
- 3 The vice of gambling and the virtue of insurance
- 4 Passing the time
- 5 A pack of cards
- 6 Other people
- 7 Simple games
- 8 Points of agreement
- 9 Long duels
- 10 A night at the casino
- 11 Prophecy
- 12 Final reflections
- Appendix A The logarithm
- Appendix B Cardano
- Appendix C Huygens's problems
- Appendix D Hints on pronunciation
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Passing the time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 A day at the races
- 2 The long run
- 3 The vice of gambling and the virtue of insurance
- 4 Passing the time
- 5 A pack of cards
- 6 Other people
- 7 Simple games
- 8 Points of agreement
- 9 Long duels
- 10 A night at the casino
- 11 Prophecy
- 12 Final reflections
- Appendix A The logarithm
- Appendix B Cardano
- Appendix C Huygens's problems
- Appendix D Hints on pronunciation
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The three towers
Mr Claus, mandarin of the College of Li-Sou-Stan reported that, during his travels,
… he saw in the great temple at Benares, beneath the dome which marks the centre of the world, a brass plate in which are fixed three diamond needles, each a cubit high and as thick as the body of a bee. On one of these needles, God placed, at the Creation, sixty-four discs of pure gold, the largest disc resting on the brass plate, the others getting smaller and smaller up to the top. This is the sacred tower of Brahma. Night and day, teams of priests follow each other on the steps of the altar transferring the discs from one diamond needle to another according to the fixed and immutable laws of Brahma [which require that the priests on duty must not move more than one disc at a time, and that no disc may be placed on a needle which already holds a smaller disc]. When the sixty-four discs shall have been thus transferred from the needle on which, at the creation, God placed them to one of the other needles, then towers and priests alike will vanish and the universe will end. (page 57, Volume 3.)
Exercise 4.1.1Quickly guess the time to the end of the world.
In order to find how much time remains before the end of the world, we consider the more general case in which the priests have n discs on one needle A and must transfer them to the second needle B making use of the third needle C.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Naive Decision MakingMathematics Applied to the Social World, pp. 111 - 147Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008