Correct, but you were not required to give an explanation for your answer. But since you seem to like explanations, maybe this one will be more to your liking: A monastery houses 100 monks who are not allowed to communicate with each other in any way. They meet only once per day, for dinner at a large round table, but even then they are not allowed to talk, give signs or anything, only to look at each other. There is only one exception to this rule: In case of an emergency the head of the monastery is allowed to speak. One evening he does that and tells his monks that there is a disease among them. Those who have contracted it have a big red spot on their forhead. Although the disease is not contagious, he gives the order that every monk has to kill himself the day he finds out that he has the disease. There are no mirrors in the monastery and no way for any monk to see his own forhead. But every evening each one sees all the other monks' forheads, just not his own. Ten of the 100 monks have the disease and therefore the dot. After the first supper, they all go to their rooms, and everyone returns the next evening. The same thing happens until the tenth day after the announcement. On the eleventh evening only 90 monks return from their chambers to eat. The other 10 have committed suicide. They were exactly the diseased ones. How did they know?
Well they can see the others... so if they see 9 with the dot and on the 9th evening they all come to supper... its pretty obvious you are the tenth so GOOD NIGHT... man you just gotta wait it out -- that would suck -- pretty miserable depressing riddle that is... In addition ICE CREAM MELTS FASTER!!!! Oooops meant to say on the 10th day if 9 come
It might be pretty obvious to you, but I have yet to find an explanation that the average person would understand. Maybe it is just one of the things that the average person is not meant to understand.
Am I right? Because I have to tell you that I got it quickly upon reading it BUT the more I thought about it and tried to express it -- the further away the answer/sense whatever went --the shit just got fuzzier and fuzzier...
Yes, you are right, but if you are like me, you might soon realize that you don't quite understand it, a little later you will think you understand it, a little while after that you won't, then you will. It might go on for the rest of your life. That's why I am still looking for an explanation that would be easy to understand for everyone. It's weird, after thinking about it for several days, you will probably be able to prove it mathematically, but you might still not be satisfied until you can explain it to your dog. If that ever happens...
Well it is self-inferential in nature so it is always going to be 'fuzzy' imo... Its kinda like trying to bite your own teeth... if you want to understand it I would suggest not using the left side of your brain
The weird thing is, they ALL know that they will all return at least 9 times, some of them (those who see nine dots) hope that those nine will not return on the tenth day, the others hope that those ten won't return on the eleventh day. So, if they all know that nothing will happen for the next 9 days, why can't they just skip those 9 days and cut right to the chase? They are all really cheating, since they are communicating by appearing or not appearing. Every night every one of them communicates one bit of information to the other: Whether he is alive or dead that day. Now, the next question is, if each one of them can communicate one bit per day in this manner, then why can't they shorten the process by encoding the number of dots each of them sees as a binary number? In fact, they could start with the least significant bit, then everyone would know after the first night. But they are not allowed to communicate the information that they would encode information in that way. So it doesn't work. When you think about it, it becomes even deeper, you can't really say each one communicates one bit of information every night, since the key to decoding the information must be communicated as well. A math professor, who has not understood this whole thing yet either, keeps investigating the question: "Exactly what information do the monks gain on the first day after the speech?" I think if we can answer that question, we might understand the whole thing completely.
You might be onto something there, that math professor I mentioned has had more difficulty understanding it than anyone else I know.
that is just bullshit. you fail to state whether the monks were TOLD that there were exactly 10 of them with the disease. if they were told, then it's straight simple. you can see nine others, it means number ten is you. they'd all go kill themselves that night. if this is meant to be a directly logical problem, then use of "right brain" doesn't factor into any explanation. without that knowledge, the only reasonable answer is "they guessed right".