Imagine that you are being held captive in a dungeon by an evil mathematician with a number of other prisoners, and suppose that every prisoner is given a red or green hat (chosen at random). Your captor will allow you and all the other prisoners to go free if every prisoner successfully guesses his or her own hat color, but if even one person guesses incorrectly then the lot of you will be fed to a hungry dragon*. Are there strategies that will increase your chances of success? If we find a strategy, how can we be sure it is a good one? How does the number of prisoners affect our chances? In this session, we will explore variations on this problem and see what we can learn about probability along the way.
*Problem Statement Adapted from Wayne County Math Teachers’ Circle
Zoom Info will be sent to registrants by 10/4/21