Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Los ratones estan borrachos

Suppose some guy has 1000 bottles of wine. He finds out that 1 bottle is poisoned. Fortunately, he has 10 mice which he can use to check which bottle is tainted. It takes a day though to find the result of the test (i.e. if mouse drinks bad wine, it dies in 24 hrs). The dude is throwing a big party the next night. If he runs optimal tests with his mice, how many of the 1000 bottles can he served at the party? E.g. he could have each mouse drink from a bottle. If they all live, he knows that 10 bottles are safe. All mice have to be assigned to bottles right away, because there’s only 24 hours to the party.