Next week will be the last Junior Colloquium of the semester, and will be
at 1:25 Thursday rather than 3:35 (still in the 4th floor colloquium
room), so as not to interfere with Honors Day. Don't forget that the
Undergraduate Math Conference is next Saturday, with plenty of interesting
talks to go to. Send an e-mail to Dr. Anderson ([log in to unmask]) to
register for the conference if you haven't already done so.
Next week's speaker is Professor Judy Walker from the University of Nebraska.
Title: What color is my hat? And what does that have to do with my ipod?
Abstract: As each of three people enter a room, either an orange hat
or a white hat (with the color chosen randomly and independently) is
placed on his head. Each person can see the other hats but not his
own. They can discuss strategy before they enter the room, but after
they've entered no communication is allowed. Once they've looked at
the other hats, the players must simultaneously guess their own hat
colors or pass. The group shares a prize if at least one person
guesses correctly and no one guesses incorrectly. The "obvious"
strategy (one person guesses "Orange" no matter what and the other two
pass) yields a 50% success rate. Is there a better strategy? What if
there are more than three players? We will use the theory of
error-correcting codes to find the optimal strategy for this game in
many situations.
Conrad Plaut
Professor, Director of UT Math Honors
Math Department
Ayres Hall 224C
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-0612
Phone: 865-974-4319
http://web.utk.edu/~cplaut
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