Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock: counting on chance
I was never a fan of probability theory, but after I came to know the probabilistic method, I got to truly appreciate probability and all the amazing stuff we can do with it. A friend of mine collects RPG dice, and I gifted her one of those on her last birthday. But with a twist: I told her that there was a $5$% probability that the outcome of rolling it would be not a number, but the word “beagle”. Ok, if you’re as confused as were my friend, it’s rightly so, as this episode didn’t actually happen and as far as I know there are no on-sale RPG dice with the word “beagle” in it. But there’s a weird mathematical consequence of what I said to my friend, and weirdly enough, this has something to do with one of the most fascinating existence proof methods in math. And if you want to add to the weirdness, we can apply the method to a rock, paper, scissors related mathematical problem. Tournaments and its representations The Big Bang Theory fans probably remember the one-of-a-kind “rock, ...