The Two Envelopes Problem
One envelope holds twice as much money as the other. The arithmetic says swap — then says swap back, forever.
1953 (Littlewood, crediting Schrödinger), 1989 (envelope form)19 min read
English analysis
John Edensor Littlewood
1885 – 1977
Cambridge analyst, and for thirty-five years G. H. Hardy's collaborator on the distribution of primes, Waring's problem and Fourier analysis. His 1953 collection "A Mathematician's Miscellany" preserves, in a few lines, a card version of the exchange paradox that he credits to Erwin Schrödinger — one of the earliest records of the two envelopes argument.
2 entries
The Ross-Littlewood Paradox
You add ten balls and remove one, infinitely many times. At the end, the vase is empty. What happened to all the balls?
19887 min read