Sunday, November 9, 2008

Hotel Infinity

I heard about this from Wen Cin a few weeks ago. After reading more about it, I have decided to write a short post about it in my blog. However, I am not good enough in maths to understand this thoroughly so please forgive me for any inaccuracy in my post.

Lets assume there is a hotel of infinitely many rooms and every room is occupied.
Case 1: A new guest comes and requests for accommodation.
Solution: Guest in room 1 shifts to room 2, guest in room 2 shifts to room 3 and so on ( meaning guest staying in room n shifts to room n+1 ). Then the new guest will stay in room 1

Case 2: A bus carrying a countable infinite number of guests arrive at the hotel and all of them request for accommodation.
Solution: Guest in room 1 shifts to room 2, guest in room 2 shifts to room 4 and so on (meaning guest staying in room n shifts to room 2n, leaving all the odd number room empty). Then all the new guests will accommodate the odd number room.

Case 3: A countable infinite number of buses, each carrying a countable infinite number of guests arrive at the hotel and all of them request for accommodation.
Solution: Guest in room 1 shifts to room 2, guest in room 2 shifts to room 4 and so on (meaning guest staying in room n shifts to room 2n, leaving all the odd number room empty). All the passengers from bus 1 will accommodate rooms 3n for n = 1,2,3 ... The passengers from bus 2 will accommodate rooms 5n , and so on ( meaning passengers from bus i will accommodate rooms pn where p is the (i+1)-th prime number).

Source: Wikipedia

1 comment:

  1. Hey Kok Hou,
    Got something to point out..There are infinitely many rooms empty for case 3, eg. room 15, 21, 33, 35 and so on...Anyway, since everyone got their rooms, doesn't really matter anyway.

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