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 Solvers150
Suggested Problems
-
17881 Solvers
-
Given an unsigned integer x, find the largest y by rearranging the bits in x
1791 Solvers
-
288 Solvers
-
227 Solvers
-
Back to basics 3 - Temp Directory
366 Solvers
More from this Author55
Problem Tags
Community Treasure Hunt
Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!
Start Hunting!