The Josephus Problem - Numberphile
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as an excellent example of solving small cases to find a pattern, and as a favorite puzzle with an elegant binary solution.
What it is
Numberphile with Daniel Erman on the Josephus problem, where people in a circle are eliminated in turn. It shows how the survivor's position follows a neat pattern tied to powers of two and binary.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2018 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Recommends yantrams · 2018-06 · on “Dealing with Hard Problems (2015)”
Taking a break from sitting at the desk and going for a walk and thinking about the problem has worked surprisingly well for me many times. It was something I first read about in a Poincare's article on how Mathematical ideas are generated. Coming to general methods of problem solving in recreational math, I always look for symmetry and transforming the problem from one problem space to another and induction techniques before attacking it. For a research/modelling problem, my approach is to start working on the most simplified version of it and gradually progress towards the original problem. There is an excellent numberphile video on Josephus problem that illustrates how examining specific
Recommends hostcontroller · 2022-08 · on “Ask HN: What's your favorite math/logic puzzle?”
I really like the Josephus Problem ([Numberphile‘s Video on YT]( [this video] )) because of the binary twist, really enjoyed Veritasium‘s [3x+1]( [LINK] ) and my favorite is your described [100 Prisoners Riddle]( [LINK] ) too
Cites d0mine · 2019-12 · on “Many elementary teachers don’t understand math, and it makes them anxious”
Simple examples may be useful. Exploring them, proving stuff about them it is how one may carve a foothold to solve a harder problem. Example: The Josephus Problem - Numberphile [this video]
Cites leipert · 2022-06 · on “I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)”
When I interviewed at my current company, I was pretty stressed about the interview and watched some Numberphile videos the night before to take my mind off things. Weirdly enough one of the problems discussed in the interview was about the Josephus problem which has a neat solution in binary [0]. I don’t recall if I ever asked the interviewer whether they also watched the video recently or how they came to think of it. [0]: [this video]