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
What an interesting pattern!
Solution Comments
Show commentsProblem Recent Solvers155
Suggested Problems
-
1345 Solvers
-
Find perfect placement of non-rotating dominoes (easier)
373 Solvers
-
Return unique values without sorting
982 Solvers
-
Getting the row and column location from a matrix
294 Solvers
-
616 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!