Looking Glass Universe | Your Secret Mission @LookingGlassUniverse | Uploaded September 2014 | Updated October 2024, 1 week ago.
A puzzle for you. Alternative questions and hints below (hints are right at the bottom so you can avoid them):
THE RULES:
The enemy always asks each spy one of three questions and we KNOW what the 3 questions are in advance.
You need to decide how to train the spies so that when the enemy interrogates them, their answers fit these 3 rules:
1. On average, 1/2 the spies who are asked a question say yes, the other half say no.
2. If partners are asked the same question, they must give the same answer.
3. Half the partners say the same thing, ( ie both say yes or both say no) but the other half say different things (ie one says yes, the other no) on average.
Your second mission is to show criteria 3 is a bad idea; If you have a scheme that satisfies all 3 of these, the enemy will be able to tell that your spies worked together to try trick them. Instead, there shouldn't be a way to distinguish which pairs of spies came from you and which came from other groups.
ALTERNATIVE QUESTIONS:
-What happens if you relax any of the conditions? (i.e. only try and satisfy 2 of the 3 conditions)
-What if we know exactly which question they’re going to ask?
-What are the best questions the enemy can ask to get information from us? Should the questions be related? For example, should they ask questions where if a person answered yes to one of them, they are much more likely to have answered yes to the second, eg: If question 1 is: 'Do you like a lot of fruit?', and question 2 is 'Do you like Mango?', if someone is answering honestly and they said yes to liking fruit, they would have been more likely to say yes to liking Mango too. Is it better to ask related questions like this? Or unrelated?
-Why do The Enemy have such a weird interrogation scheme (make up a story! (Entertain me))
-(Your own question here)
Social media things I don't understand:
Twitter:
@Looking_glass_u
Facebook
facebook.com/LookingGlassUniverse
Tumblr (this is probably where I'll put extra material)
looking-glass-universe.tumblr.com
HINT with task 1:
Suppose that all the spies who got caught really were from different groups and really did say the truth. How often would you expect them to say the same thing?
MASSIVE HINT for task 2:
youtu.be/7zfnvGXpy-g
A puzzle for you. Alternative questions and hints below (hints are right at the bottom so you can avoid them):
THE RULES:
The enemy always asks each spy one of three questions and we KNOW what the 3 questions are in advance.
You need to decide how to train the spies so that when the enemy interrogates them, their answers fit these 3 rules:
1. On average, 1/2 the spies who are asked a question say yes, the other half say no.
2. If partners are asked the same question, they must give the same answer.
3. Half the partners say the same thing, ( ie both say yes or both say no) but the other half say different things (ie one says yes, the other no) on average.
Your second mission is to show criteria 3 is a bad idea; If you have a scheme that satisfies all 3 of these, the enemy will be able to tell that your spies worked together to try trick them. Instead, there shouldn't be a way to distinguish which pairs of spies came from you and which came from other groups.
ALTERNATIVE QUESTIONS:
-What happens if you relax any of the conditions? (i.e. only try and satisfy 2 of the 3 conditions)
-What if we know exactly which question they’re going to ask?
-What are the best questions the enemy can ask to get information from us? Should the questions be related? For example, should they ask questions where if a person answered yes to one of them, they are much more likely to have answered yes to the second, eg: If question 1 is: 'Do you like a lot of fruit?', and question 2 is 'Do you like Mango?', if someone is answering honestly and they said yes to liking fruit, they would have been more likely to say yes to liking Mango too. Is it better to ask related questions like this? Or unrelated?
-Why do The Enemy have such a weird interrogation scheme (make up a story! (Entertain me))
-(Your own question here)
Social media things I don't understand:
Twitter:
@Looking_glass_u
facebook.com/LookingGlassUniverse
Tumblr (this is probably where I'll put extra material)
looking-glass-universe.tumblr.com
HINT with task 1:
Suppose that all the spies who got caught really were from different groups and really did say the truth. How often would you expect them to say the same thing?
MASSIVE HINT for task 2:
youtu.be/7zfnvGXpy-g
