Problem #PRU-100385

Problems Discrete Mathematics Set theory and logic Mathematical logic

Problem

A young and ambitious software engineer is working on his own basic version of an intelligent personal assistant. The application can only answer closed questions (a closed question is a question that can be answered only ‘yes’ or ‘no’). He installs this application on three mobile devices and runs a set of tests. He discovers there is one unstable device. From time to time the application gives wrong answers, but you cannot really predict when. Being exhausted after unsuccessful attempts to find the mistake in his code, the software engineer goes to sleep. The next morning he cannot remember which device is not working properly. Taking into account that devices are connected to the same server (so normally working applications can detect which one is not always receiving the signal) explain how in two questions the engineer can determine the unstable device. One question is for one device only.