Chapter 20: First Thesis
"This is high school level stuff," the short guy in glasses voiced.
"It indeed is, that's why it's a warm-up, Will," Professor Yang agreed.
"Well, anyone with a bit of logical thinking could solve this. Let me try..." Will stood up and made his way to the whiteboard.
"No matter how logical people are, if they don't have enough brain cells, they are still stupid," Nadya commented.
I grinned; Nadya had a knack for making depressing comments.
"If we represent the cards as numbers... Let a card face-down be a 1 and a card face-up be a 0, we might be met with a situation like this..." Will started to write on the whiteboard, creating a binary sequence '1001110110011011...'
"We can see that there are only two possible scenarios for a move: '11' and '10'," he explained as he continued writing.
"In each case after a move, we are left with a decreasing amount of 1's: '10' and '00'," Will continued, pointing out patterns.
"Assuming that the whole series of cards is a binary number instead, a decreasing number of ones, in this manner particularly, signifies a decreasing value and a binary number tending to the value of 0, as it cannot be negative," Will finished before turning towards Professor Yang.
"It cannot be negative indeed," Professor Yang stated, before looking at Professor Milik. "Professor, it's your turn; my questions are too simple."
"Okay, I will give you guys a question from one of the previous IMCs," Professor Milik looked at us meaningfully. "And don't get ahead of yourself; this is a question that I didn't include in the papers that I sent you," he smirked.