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Easy tournament format question

Posted By: Daniel Murphy
Date: Thursday, 31 January 2008, at 10:00 p.m.

Suppose you're running a backgammon tournament. The format is single elimination cup: lose a match and you're out.

Suppose there are 637 players in the tournament.

And suppose (since you're going to videotape each match, one tape per match) you need to know: how many matches will be played in all?

Can you figure it out or ... do you niftily know the answer already?

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Adapted from Robert Scott Root-Bernstein's book Discovering: Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge, 1989, Harvard University Press. Root-Bernstein was a MacArthur Fellow 1981-86 and is Professor of Physiology at Michigan State University.

Messages In This Thread

• Easy tournament format question
  Daniel Murphy -- Thursday, 31 January 2008, at 10:00 p.m.
  • Easy tournament format question
    Bob Koca -- Thursday, 31 January 2008, at 10:06 p.m.
  • Easy tournament format question
    DC-Ohio -- Thursday, 31 January 2008, at 11:39 p.m.
    • Here's a real one, but a bit tougher
      Chuck Bower -- Friday, 1 February 2008, at 3:01 p.m.
      • Here's a real one, but a bit tougher
        Daniel Murphy -- Saturday, 2 February 2008, at 3:55 a.m.
        • Here's a real one, but a bit tougher
          Tom Keith -- Saturday, 2 February 2008, at 10:02 a.m.
          • Here's a real one, but a bit tougher
            Daniel Murphy -- Saturday, 2 February 2008, at 10:44 p.m.
            • Here's a real one, but a bit tougher
              Tom Keith -- Saturday, 2 February 2008, at 11:56 p.m.