A quick riddler resolution during a committee meeting (!) of a short riddle: 36 houses stand in a row and collapse at times t=1,2,..,36. In addition, once a house collapses, the neighbours if still standing collapse at the next time unit. What are the shortest and longest lifespans of this row? Since a house with […]
![Le Monde puzzle [#1051]](https://xianblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/sieglemond.jpg?w=450&h=192)
A combinatoric Le Monde mathematical puzzle of limited size: When the only allowed move is to switch two balls from adjacent boxes, what is the minimal number of moves to return all balls in the above picture to their respective boxes? Same question with six boxes and 12 balls. The question is rather interesting to […]
The simple riddle of last week on The Riddler, about the minimum number of urinals needed for n men to pee if the occupation rule is to stay as far as possible from anyone there and never to stand next to another man, is quickly solved by an R code: ocupee=function(M){ ok=rep(0,M) ok[1]=ok[M]=1 ok[trunc((1+M/2))]=1 while […]
![practical Bayesian inference [book review]](https://i1.wp.com/www.mpia.de/homes/calj/pbi/cover.jpg)
[Disclaimer: I received this book of Coryn Bailer-Jones for a review in the International Statistical Review and intend to submit a revised version of this post as my review. As usual, book reviews on the ‘Og are reflecting my own definitely personal and highly subjective views on the topic!] It is always a bit of […]
An algorithmic Le Monde mathematical puzzle with a direct Alice and Bob play a game by picking alternatively one of the remaining digits between 1 and 10 and putting it in either one of two available stacks, 1 or 2. Their respective gains are the products of the piles (1 for Alice and 2 for […]
This post is to announce a second occurrence of the exciting “masterclass in Bayesian Statistics” that we organised in 2016, near Marseilles. It will take place on 22-26 October 2018 once more at CIRM (Centre International de Recherches Mathématiques, Luminy, Marseilles, France). The targeted audience includes all scientists interested in learning how Bayesian inference may […]
An arithmetic Le Monde mathematical puzzle: A magical integer m is such that the remainder of the division of any prime number p by m is either a prime number or 1. What is the unique magical integer between 25 and 100? And is there any less than 25? The question is dead easy to […]
While in Brussels last week I noticed an interesting question on X validated that I considered in the train back home and then more over the weekend. This is a question about spacings, namely how long on average does it take to cover an interval of length L when drawing unit intervals at random (with […]
![a one-chance meeting [puzzle]](https://xianblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/circum2.jpg?w=300&h=300)
This afternoon, I took a quick look at the current Riddler puzzle, which sums up as, given three points A, B, C, arbitrarily moving on a plane with a one-shot view of their respective locations, find a moving rule to bring the three together at the same point at the same time. And could not […]
In another continuation of the summer of Bayesian conferences in Europe, the Universidat de Valencià is organising a summer school on Bayesian statistics, from 16 July till 20 July, 2018. Which thus comes right after our summer school on computational statistics at Warwick. With a basic course on Bayesian learning (2 days). And a more […]
