Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 3

Is it possible to:

a) load two coins so that the probability of “heads” and “tails” were different, and the probability of getting any of the combinations “tails, tails,” “heads, tails”, “heads, heads” be the same?

b) load two dice so that the probability of getting any amount from 2 to 12 would be the same?

Two people play a game with the following rules: one of them guesses a set of integers \((x_1, x_2, \dots , x_n)\) which are single-valued digits and can be either positive or negative. The second person is allowed to ask what is the sum \(a_1x_1 + \dots + a_nx_n\), where \((a_1, \dots ,a_n)\) is any set. What is the smallest number of questions for which the guesser recognizes the intended set?