Problem 271. N-Cards Problem
You have a deck of N cards numbered in order from 1 to N. You discard the top card (card 1) and place the next card (card 2) at the bottom of the deck. Then you discard the top card of the remaining deck (card 3), and place the next card (card 4) at the bottom of the deck. We repeat the procedure: discarding the top card and placing the next card at the bottom of the deck. Eventually, you will have one card left. What is the number of that card?
Example
nCardsProblem(5)
deck = [ 1 2 3 4 5 ] deck = [ 2 3 4 5 ] deck = [ 3 4 5 2 ] deck = [ 4 5 2 ] deck = [ 5 2 4 ] deck = [ 2 4 ] deck = [ 4 2 ] deck = [ 2 ]
Solution Stats
Problem Comments
-
1 Comment
Peter Wittenberg
on 29 Aug 2012
What an interesting pattern!
Solution Comments
Show commentsProblem Recent Solvers152
Suggested Problems
-
3829 Solvers
-
Return a list sorted by number of occurrences
2773 Solvers
-
233 Solvers
-
Getting the absolute index from a matrix
246 Solvers
-
Convert from Base 10 to base 5
259 Solvers
More from this Author56
Problem Tags
Community Treasure Hunt
Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!
Start Hunting!