River Crossings (and Alcuin Numbers) - Numberphile
Discussing vertex covers and Alcuin numbers for graphs - and a famous old puzzle. Filmed at MSRI with Dr Annie Raymond. More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓ Annie Raymond:...
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I want to tell you about a generalization of a problem that was first popularized by Al Cohen of York, who was an anglo-saxon really smart dude. The problem is: you have a farmer who comes to your river and with him he has a wolf, a bundle of cabbages and a goat; and there's a boat, that's there and it carry-- it can carry him, and one of his charges. Obviously the farmer has to be there because he has to be rowing, and he wants to bring everything to the other shore safely. So that means that he cannot leave the cabbage with the goat, because the goat would be eating the cabbage, and he cannot leave the wolf with the goat because then the wolf would eat the goat. So how can he do it? And so of course we're assuming that the wolf cannot swim wh...
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I want to tell you about a generalization of a problem that was first popularized by Al Cohen of York, who was an anglo-saxon really smart dude. The problem is: you have a farmer who comes to your river and with him he has a wolf, a bundle of cabbages and a goat; and there's a boat, that's there and it carry-- it can carry him, and one of his charges. Obviously the farmer has to be there because he has to be rowing, and he wants to bring everything to the other shore safely. So that means that he cannot leave the cabbage with the goat, because the goat would be eating the cabbage, and he cannot leave the wolf with the goat because then the wolf would eat the goat. So how can he do it? And so of course we're assuming that the wolf cannot swim wh...
