Thursday, October 20, 2005

The Italy trip (2)

The talks.
My talk does not attract a lot of people, as expected (within there I'm considered very "practical"). I was told that in the last session of the first day there are only 7 people in the room. Obviously there are more people than that in my talk.

Some of the talks I understand describe results that seem too good to appear in this conference...

Questions in Dinners.
Pretty much the same set of people are in my table every meal, and they discuss these questions.

(1) 100 ants are placed at different positions along a 1-metre-long rod. At time 0 they all move, in either left or right direction, with a speed of 1 meter per minute. An ant reaching either ends of the rod simply falls off, while if two ants meet, they immediately reverse direction and continue moving with the same speed. When will all ants fall off (with the adversarial, i.e. worst starting configuration)?

I haven't heard about this before, and the solution is so trivial that makes anyone needing to think about it appear so stupid. I barely manage to figure it out while the solution is being spoken out...

[to be continued]

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