The Unexpected Hanging Paradox
A prisoner is told he will hang next week, on a day he cannot possibly predict. He proves it cannot happen. It happens.
1943 (in circulation), 1948 (first in print)21 min read
American recreational mathematics and popular science
Martin Gardner
1914 – 2010
Author of the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and of more than seventy books. His 1963 column and the 1969 collection named after it, The Unexpected Hanging and Other Mathematical Diversions, carried the prediction paradox from a narrow philosophy journal debate to a general readership.
2 entries
The Boy or Girl Paradox
A family has two children and one of them is a boy. What are the odds the other is a girl? It depends on how you found out.
1959 (posed), 1961 (retracted in part)13 min read