Two real numbers

Initially found from xkcd’s blog, then got a link to MathOverflow.

Suppose you are playing a game with Alice. She uses some probability distribution to pick two distinct real numbers and writes them in two envelopes. You then choose either of the envelope and opens the number inside the envelope. Is there a strategy that guarantees you a strictly larger than 50% probability to guess correctly whether the chosen real number is the greater or the lesser, for any probability distribution that Alice uses?

This is my take on the problem; feel free to comment, discuss, or argue with me! As long as the discussion is kept civil.

The answer is yes.

[IMO 2012 Post 5] Games and More Games

And now we’re back from a 12-post series of puzzles to the silently postponed IMO 2012 series.

In a nutshell: It’s too dark. Uh well I can’t summarize this neatly, but let’s say we have a bunch of games and stuffs.

Fun diversion: The linked picture (hopefully you can see it; it’s in IMO 2012’s Facebook page) has the Indonesian team at the lower-right corner. Guess who is which. Participants names can be seen in this page.

[IMO 2012 Post 4] Six Problems

Hm I start to forget stuffs in IMO. Better get these out before I forget it entirely.

In short, I did extremely poorly in it, at least for my target of getting 21 points or silver whichever is higher. Stuffs aside, I’m having moar fun in the recreation hall, especially after Day 2’s contest where the stuffs of recreation hall becomes available.

[IMO 2012 Part 3] Recreation Hall

Hm for an absolutely unrelated opening text: I find out the following comment from someone, filtered in my Spam. I have a hard time deciding whether it’s spam or not -_-

“I went over this internet site and I conceive you have a lot of great info, saved to my bookmarks (:.”

IMO 2012, Post 3. In short, I find the recreation hall. Stuffs basically don’t deviate far from that thing.

[IMO 2012 Part 2] A Long Journey

Too much Where’s My Water?. Also still a bit jetlagged.

In short, the journey to finally reach the official hotel (NH Gran Hotel Provincial) is long. At least for Indonesia team. But we made it past flights totaling over 24 hours, extremely cold temperatures for us tropic people, and…err…stuffs that are unusual.

[IMO 2012 Post 1] Summarizing

Okay I’m a bad blogger for not posting for 1.5 months, but that’s another story.

So, as you might have known, I was going to IMO 2012 in Mar Del Plata, Argentina. If you know my real name, you know that I’m one of the “unlucky” ones of getting a double-digit score and not getting Honorable Mention. Or at least I consider those people unlucky, myself included.

I will begin (or try to) a series of posts retelling how my trip to the opposite side of the world was. (If you don’t get it, I’m in Indonesia and I went to Argentina. Yeah, opposite.) Hopefully. I’m still having jet lag and is now in a half-conscious state, being able to fall asleep at any time.

Warning: This post contains a lot of math stuffs. Read at your own risk.

Goals

UPDATE (20 Nov 2012, 19.46 UTC+7): Okay this is obvious

Math, career, and life:
– IMO participant (done) Gold IMO medallist (IMO 2012 fail. Now 7m)
– Get scholarship for college (7m)
– Has own website domain and a well-known internet company (15y)

Programming:
– Fluent in C++ or Pascal or Python or Java (2m)
– Solve 250 Project Euler problems (7m)
– Get URLQuest 3 well-known (2y)

Games:
– Catch all legends in HG (done)
– Get BW2 (done)

Yay. I have bad life goals.

Long time no post

And hence I should let my readers to know that this blog is not dead.

Things I learn:

– Double negative (2C – 2D!, 2H – 3C!) is bad for games. 3H is down 1, although we hold like 8 or 9 hearts (I forgot) and stoppers in two side suits. Yeah, only two side suits. The other has two losers before I get it void.

– In Virtual Villagers 5: New Believers, HEATHENS CAN DIE. I’m not sure where my Heathen Master Scientist went, but it certainly made me unable to complete the puzzle involving them and another involving the Chief. Which means no earthquakes. Ugh, I don’t even get revive. No fish + 43 people = 0 food. Currently restarting.

– In osu!, streams are hell. In Pachelbel’s Canon (Funtastic Power!), Canon difficulty, I failed at the last 5 seconds of the song because apparently I sped up my rhythm during the last stream, missing the later notes and eventually the attempt. 😦

– Making sufficiently hard geo problems is hard 😦 Making sufficiently hard combo is easy though 😀 (written by the mind of a combo-lover-and-geo-hater olympiad math person)

– I can’t make good room designs 😦 This means I will rarely post Surveyors Heyawake. I’m absolutely sure it has more tricks than what I have in Puzzle 4 though.

– Yay. What do you call it if you have a memory card filled with DS games? Whatever it is, here’s a story. I have two DS, and I also have a MicroSD-to-computer “hub” or something. So, I copied my save data of Pokemon Platinum to computer (and also backed up the contents of one memory card), then do a trade (well, eight trades to be precise) between my Pt and HG. Later, after I finished moving all I want to HG, I’ll see the result of replacing back the back up as my actual Pt data. So, cloning in a new form perhaps? The Pokemon that will disappear along with the temporary Pt are worthless ones. Oh hey I haven’t caught a Magikarp in HG.

– Also in conjunction with above, I used whatever the “cheat-by-toggling-which-cheats-you-want-to-use-when-you-load-the-game-by-the-OS-(or-whatever)” to get the three event items in Pt (Member Card, Oak’s Letter, Azure Flute). I caught Darkrai and Shaymin, but Arceus is Lv80 and my team is only Lv74 at most 😦 Whatever. And hey Shaymin. Yeah I sent it to my HG too. Currently training.

– I decided to recruit people as “development team” of URLQuest 3. If you have ideas of what to make a good online riddle website, e-mail me. Did I write my e-mail in the About page?