Yearly Archives: 2000

As I have been pretty much house bound for the past two
weeks, working on my dissertation, I ordered a few cd’s from
78s (one of the
best music stores in Perth) over the internet. Very good
service, and the much faster than other places I tried.

Got a copy of the new Turnstyle record Geek Party. It is
a good compilation.

Looks like they sold Fatso
for AU$80,450. Eric
Moussambani’s goggles sold for a fair amount as well.
There is a nice quote from him on the auction page at
ebay.

working on honours dissertation.
due in on monday.
roy and hg’s coverage of the olympics was good.
fatso was a much better mascot.

jamesh certified aaronl as Dimwit

GNOME: prostituting
ourselves to big-money for the chance of being a
media-recognized standard since 15th August, 2000

🙂

I was looking at the coins problem. I can see a solution
if you know the bad coin is heavier (or lighter — just
s/heavier/lighter). Here is a solution for that:

1. Split the coins into 3 groups of 4 coins.
2. Put two of the groups on the balance.
3. If they weigh the same, the third group contains the bad
   coin. Otherwise, the heavier group contains the bad coin.

4. Add two coins from one of the good groups to the bad
   group, and split those coins into 3 groups of 2.

5. perform the same weighing operation to find the group
   with the bad coin. This leaves 2 coins.

6. Weigh the last two coins. The heavier of the 2 is the
   bad coin.

This doesn’t answer the original problem, but may give
some idea of what it would look like. If you know the bad
coin is heavier and can do 3 weighs, you should be able to
pick the bad coin out of a group of 27 coins.