Skip to main content

数学趣题:区分好人与坏人

问题:现有n个人,多于一半是好人,其余为坏人。你并不不知道他们具体谁是好人谁是坏人,然而他们彼此很清楚。
现在你每次可以挑两个人互相指认对方是好人还是坏人,好人总说实话,而坏人则会胡说(不一定是假话)。
请找到一个算法区分所有好人与坏人,并给出所需次数(大致数量级即可)

解答:(以下为大致阐述,对于细节,如是否严格大于或大于等于之类请自行讨论)
对于n较小的情况,如2,3,可以指定一个人T,让他与其余所有人互相指认,因为好人多于坏人,所以看结果是说T是好人的多还是坏人的多,那个多T就是哪个,如果一样多,T是好人。此时虽然是n平方数量级,但也可看作线性。

对n较大的情况,我们希望尽快找到一个好人以便指认出其余人的情况
把n个人两两分组(如有多余暂不考虑,放到下一轮处理),让他们互相指认。结果有如下几种情况:
a.至少一个人说对方是坏人
b.都说对方是好人

对于a, 组里至少一个人是坏人,我们把所有这样的组全部“淘汰”
对于b, 组里两个人必同为好人或同为坏人,我们在这样的组中每组任选一个淘汰。

这样一轮下来,可以知道淘汰掉的坏人不少于淘汰掉的好人,仔细分析还可知道剩下的人当中一定还是好人比坏人严格多。
这样下去直至剩下小于4人的情况,就可以用最开始的方法找到一个好人。
此时所花的次数约为N/2 + N/4 + ..., 大约等于N,然后再用至多N-1次指认就可以分辨所有好人与坏人了。

所以最后的数量级为2N

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Determine Perspective Lines With Off-page Vanishing Point

In perspective drawing, a vanishing point represents a group of parallel lines, in other words, a direction. For any point on the paper, if we want a line towards the same direction (in the 3d space), we simply draw a line through it and the vanishing point. But sometimes the vanishing point is too far away, such that it is outside the paper/canvas. In this example, we have a point P and two perspective lines L1 and L2. The vanishing point VP is naturally the intersection of L1 and L2. The task is to draw a line through P and VP, without having VP on the paper. I am aware of a few traditional solutions: 1. Use extra pieces of paper such that we can extend L1 and L2 until we see VP. 2. Draw everything in a smaller scale, such that we can see both P and VP on the paper. Draw the line and scale everything back. 3. Draw a perspective grid using the Brewer Method. #1 and #2 might be quite practical. #3 may not guarantee a solution, unless we can measure distances/p...

Chasing an IO Phantom

My home server has been weird since months ago, it just becomes unresponsive occassionally. It is annoying but it happens only rarely, so normally I'd just wait or reboot it. But weeks ago I decided to get to the bottom of it. What's Wrong My system set up is: Root: SSD, LUKS + LVM + Ext4 Data: HDD, LUKS + ZFS 16GB RAM + 1GB swap Rootless dockerd The system may become unresponsive, when the IO on HDD  is persistantly high for a while. Also: Often kswapd0 has high CPU High IO on root fs (SSD) From dockerd and some containers RAM usage is high, swap usage is low It is very strange that IO on HDD can affect SSD. Note that when this happens, even stopping the IO on HDD does not always help. Usually restarting dockerd does not help, but rebooting helps. Investigation: Swap An obvious potential root cause is the swap. High CPU on kswapd0 usually means the free memory is low and the kernel is busy exchanging data between disk and swap. However, I tried the following steps, none of the...

Fix Google Security Code

Google Security Code (http://g.co/sc) is one type of 2-step verification. This is particularly useful when security keys and passkeys are not available. I have been using it in my LXC containers, until today I found out that it stopped working. It just kept saying "The code is invalid". It is easy to rule out some factors: The code works on other browsers on my laptop. The code works on other devices that are directly connected to the router. So it appears that Google also checks IP addresses besides the security code. Recently I have IPv6 enabled, so most devices that are directly connected to the router have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. But  I only enabled IPv4 for my LXC containers. So I guess when a code is generated by device A and used by device B, Google should be able to check that device A and device B are closely located. But in my case, IPv6 address appears on device A but not on device B, which may look suspicious. To fix the problem, I just needed to disable IPv...