Month: April 2011

Sometimes, even the littlest of information gives one a wealth of information. Let me give you a short story.

The story takes place in a benightedly sexist village of uncertain location. In this village there are many married couples and each woman immediately knows when another woman’s husband has been unfaithful but not when her own has. The very strict feminist statutes of the village require that if a woman can prove her husband has been unfaithful, she must kill him that very day. Assume that the women are statute-a biding, intelligent, aware of the intelligence of the other women, and, mercifully, that they never inform other women of their philandering husbands.

As it happens, twenty of the men have been unfaithful, but since no woman can prove her husband has been so, village life proceeds merrily and warily along. Then one morning the tribal matriarch comes to visit from the far side of the forest. Her honesty is acknowledged by all and her word is taken as truth. She warns the assembled villagers that there is at least one philandering husband among them. Once this fact, already known to everyone, becomes common knowledge, what happens ?

The answer is that the matriarch’s warning will be followed by nineteen peaceful days and then, on the twentieth day, by a massive slaughter in which twenty women kill their husbands.

To see this, assume there is only one unfaithful husband, Mr. A. Everyone except Mrs. A already knows about him, so when the matriarch makes her announcement, only she learns something new from it. Being intelligent, she realizes that she would know if any other husband were unfaithful. She thus infers that Mr. A is the philanderer and kills him that very day.

Now assume there are two unfaithful men, Mr. A and Mr. B. Every woman except Mrs. A and Mrs. B knows about both these cases of infidelity. Mrs. A knows only of Mr. B’s, and Mrs. B knows only of Mr. Ns. Mrs. A thus learns nothing from the matriarch’s announcement, but when Mrs. B fails to kill Mr. B the first day, she infers that there must be a second philandering husband, who can only be Mr. A. The same holds for Mrs. B who infers from the fact that Mrs. A has not killed her husband on the first day that Mr. B is also guilty. The next day Mrs. A and Mrs. B both kill their husbands.

If there are exactly three guilty husbands, Mr. A, Mr. B, and Mr. C, then the matriarch’s announcement would have no visible effect the first day or the second, but by a reasoning process similar to the one above, Mrs. A, Mrs. B, and Mrs. C would each infer from the inaction of the other two of them on the first two days that their husbands were also guilty and kill them on the third day. By a process of mathematical induction we can conclude that if twenty husbands are unfaithful, their intelligent wives would finally be able to prove it on the twentieth day, the day of the righteous bloodbath.

I hope you had an ‘aha’ moment.