Black and White

There is a jar of 25 white marbles and 50 black marbles.

Yakub removes the marbles according to the following rule:
He picks 2 marbles at random.
If at least one of the marbles is black, then black marble is thrown away and the other marble is placed back in the jar.
If both marbles are white, then they are both thrown away.

If, after some point in time, only one marble is left in the jar, what color is it?

White Either Such a scenario is not possible Black

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10 solutions

White marbles can only be removed in pairs, so since initially there are an odd number of white marbles in the jar, there will always be at least one white marble in the jar. Meanwhile, the black marbles can be removed one at a time, so in any scenario played out to its end, all the black marbles will eventually be removed, leaving a single white marble in the jar.

Yaa, whatever be the sequence in the game, it will stop with only one white marble left.

Shib Shankar Sikder - 5 years, 10 months ago

Same thing here

Aries Tuayon - 5 years, 5 months ago
Hadia Qadir
Aug 18, 2015

,their total number is an odd value,& only u can throw them if u hv a pair,so if all the pairs r thrown out them only 1 of the white marble will be still left.so,answer is white smile emoticon

Arun Avirachan
Aug 16, 2015

consider simple example. that is 1 white marble and 2 black marble..then read the question ..think in that way.. left marble is white... ( 50 is double of 25, similar way 2 is double of 1.. comparison give the answer)

That doesn't work. If it was 2 white marbles and 4 black marbles, then we will be left with a black marble.

Chung Kevin - 5 years, 9 months ago

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There is no way 2 white marbles will be left

Sougat Shome - 5 years, 9 months ago
Sofia Fitzgerald
Nov 25, 2015

There's two possible endings in this case, since white can only be removed in pairs so there must be an odd number of whites at all times.

WWW - two whites will be removed and tossed

WBB -two blacks are removed and tossed -a white and black are removed, black is tossed, leaving a white and black. This is repeated and the other black is tossed, leaving only the white

Ibrahim Chishti
Jan 30, 2021

getting rid of black is easy, getting rid of white is hard, there is a odd number of white and they can be removed in pairss

Shruthi Srinivas
Aug 24, 2015

An intuition... Also, white marbles can be removed only in pairs.. As they r odd numbered, it'll b the last one obviously..

Aditya Bansal
Aug 23, 2015

White marbles are 25. And the are thrown away only when they are in pairs. Hence the last marble remaining has to be white. If all the black marbles are still remaining (or any number for that matter) they will be thrown out in all successive trials

Saanika Gupta
Aug 23, 2015

In the beginning, probability of getting black marbes is 2/3and white is 1/3. So of course we'll pick black more and throw them out. After some time both black and white will be left almost equally. So probability of getting two white marbles is less than probability of getting one white and one black marble. So white will be left out at last.

Govind Sharma
Aug 22, 2015

A single black marble can be thrown but white are always thrown in pairs hence all black can be thrown but as there are odd white marbles hence 1 marble will left in the end .

Jenovar Balthasar
Aug 15, 2015

By looking at the value of the number of black and white marbles we can get a logic that black marbles are thrown in odd series pattern and the other in even series pattern while both are in the multiple of 1:2 ratio so logically when white marble is throw out as even series pattern it can have 24 thrown away marble and one left out marble which can never be thrown out. in a pattern of (24+1) white marbles.

white which are odd is servived by the association with black and survived.

Sachin Kapse - 5 years, 9 months ago

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