Simulating the Ladybug Clock Puzzle: A Computational Approach to a Mathematical Problem
By
azhenley
A second-rack bagel that's nearly first-rack. Tasty stuff.
Summary
The article discusses a mathematical puzzle about a ladybug moving around a clock face, visiting all hour markers exactly once, and asks for the probability it ends on the 6 o'clock position. The author was intrigued by the puzzle shared in a 3Blue1Brown video and wrote a simulator to understand and solve it, sharing their computational approach to the problem.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledImagine that a ladybug lands on the 12 o'clock marker of a clock. It then proceeds to move either clockwise or counterclockwise to the adjacent hour marker, one at a time, and repeats until all hour markers have been visited at least once.
What is the probability that it ends on the 6?
These sort of puzzles always intrigue me. They're simple to describe and at first might even look easy to solve, but as I dig into them, my i
3Blue1Brown shared a fun puzzle that stumped me, so I wrote a simulator to understand it.
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