Abstract
Suppose we are given n balls colored with two colors. How many color-comparisons are needed to produce a ball of the majority color? The answer (first given by Saks and Werman) is M(n) = n−B(n), where B(n) is the number of 1’s in the binary representation of n. We consider in this paper several generalizations and variants of the majority problem such as producing a k-majority ball, determining the color status of all balls, arbitrarily many colors, the plurality problem, and the closely related liar problem.
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© 2007 János Bolyai Mathematical Society and Springer-Verlag
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Aigner, M. (2007). Two Colors and More. In: Csiszár, I., Katona, G.O.H., Tardos, G., Wiener, G. (eds) Entropy, Search, Complexity. Bolyai Society Mathematical Studies, vol 16. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32777-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32777-6_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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