Problems

Age
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Found: 8

Prove that in a three-digit number, that is divisible by 37, you can always rearrange the numbers so that the new number will also be divisible by 37.

Anna, Boris and Fred decided to go to a children’s Christmas party. They agreed to meet at the bus stop, but they do not know who will come to what time. Each of them can come at a random time from 15:00 to 16:00. Fred is the most patient of them all: if he comes and finds that neither Anna nor Boris are at the bus stop, then Fred will wait for one of them for 15 minutes, and if he waits for more than 15 minutes and no one arrives he will go to the Christmas party by himself. Boris is less patient: he will only wait for 10 minutes. Anna is very impatient: she will not wait at all. However, if Boris and Fred meet, they will wait for Anna until 16:00. What is the probability that all of them will go to the Christmas party?

Kate and Gina agreed to meet at the underground in the first hour of the afternoon. Kate comes to the meeting place between noon and one o’clock in the afternoon, waits for 10 minutes and then leaves. Gina does the same.

a) What is the probability that they will meet?

b) How will the probability of a meeting change if Gina decides to come earlier than half past twelve, and Kate still decides to come between noon and one o’clock?

c) How will the probability of a meeting change if Gina decides to come at an arbitrary time between 12:00 and 12:50, and Kate still comes between 12:00 and 13:00?

James furiously cuts a rectangular sheet of paper with scissors. Every second he cuts a random piece by an unsystematic rectilinear cut into two parts.

a) Find the mathematical expectation of the number of sides of a polygon (made from a piece of paper) that James randomly picks up after an hour of such work.

b) Solve the same problem if at first the piece of paper had the form of an arbitrary polygon.

The point \(O\) is randomly chosen on piece of square paper. Then the square is folded in such a way that each vertex is overlaid on the point \(O\). The figure shows one of the possible folding schemes. Find the mathematical expectation of the number of sides of the polygon that appears.

The tower in the castle of King Arthur is crowned with a roof, which is a triangular pyramid, in which all flat angles at the top are straight. Three roof slopes are painted in different colours. The red roof slope is inclined to the horizontal at an angle \(\alpha\), and the blue one at an angle \(\beta\). Find the probability that a raindrop that fell vertically on the roof in a random place fell on the green area.

Investigating one case, the investigator John Smith discovered that the key witness is the one from the Richardson family who, on that fateful day, came home before the others. The investigation revealed the following facts.

1. The neighbour Maria Ramsden, wanting to borrow some salt from the Richardson’s, rang their doorbell, but no one opened the door. At what time though? Who knows? It was already dark...

2. Jill Richardson came home in the evening and found both children in the kitchen, and her husband was on the sofa – he had a headache.

3. The husband, Anthony Richardson, declared that, when he came home, immediately sat down on the sofa and had a nap. He did not see anyone, nor did he hear anything, and the neighbour definitely did not come – the doorbell would have woken him up.

4. The daughter, Sophie, said that when she returned home, she immediately went to her room, and she does not know anything about her father, however, in the hallway, as always, she stumbled on Dan’s shoes.

5. Dan does not remember when he came home. He also did not see his father, but he did hear how Sophie got angry about his shoes.

“Aha,” thought John Smith. “What is the likelihood that Dan returned home before his father?”.

On one island, one tribe has a custom – during the ritual dance, the leader throws up three thin straight rods of the same length, connected in the likeness of the letter capital \(\pi\), \(\Pi\). The adjacent rods are connected by a short thread and therefore freely rotate relative to each other. The bars fall on the sand, forming a random figure. If it turns out that there is self-intersection (the first and third bars cross), then the tribe in the coming year are waiting for crop failures and all sorts of trouble. If there is no self-intersection, then the year will be successful – satisfactory and happy. Find the probability that in 2019, the rods will predict luck.