levy@princeton.UUCP (08/31/83)
To those of you who didn't get the statement of the problem:
Someone chooses ten (real) numbers at random and writes them on slips of
paper. Then each number is drawn (in random order) and read aloud. You
are supposed to identify the largest of the ten as soon as it is read
(without knowing the following ones). What is the strategy that permits
you to do this the greatest number of times? (A strategy is a decision
procedure that associates to each i <=10 and each sequence of numbers
already read, a1, a2,...,ai, an answer "Yes, this is the biggest" or "No".
Of course it should not depend on the numbers but only on their relative
value, since you don't even know in what range they are.)
-- Silvio Levy