shutterstock/Jose Luis Stephens
Calculating chances might be difficult, with refined modifications in context giving fairly completely different outcomes. I used to be reminded of this lately after setting BrainTwister #10 for New Scientist readers, which was in regards to the odds of seating two pairs of individuals adjacently in a row of twenty-two chairs.
A number of readers wrote to say my resolution was fallacious. I had discovered all of the potential seating preparations and counted those that had the 2 teams adjoining. The readers, in the meantime, seated one pair first after which counted the methods of seating the second pair adjacently. Neither method was fallacious, relying on the way you…
