https://mathoverflow.net/questions/151286/probabilities-in-a-riddle-involving-axiom-of-choice Probabilities in a riddle involving axiom of choice asked Dec 9 '13 at 16:16 Denis （Denis質問） I think it is ok, because the only probability measure we need is uniform probability on {0,1,…,N?1}, but other people argue it's not ok, because we would need to define a measure on sequences, and moreover axiom of choice messes everything up. （Pruss氏） The probabilistic reasoning depends on a conglomerability assumption, ・・・and we have no reason to think that the conglomerability assumption is appropriate. （Huynh氏） If it were somehow possible to put a 'uniform' measure on the space of all outcomes, then indeed one could guess correctly with arbitrarily high precision, but such a measure doesn't exist.
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/151286/probabilities-in-a-riddle-involving-axiom-of-choice Probabilities in a riddle involving axiom of choice asked Dec 9 '13 at 16:16 Denis
Answer 2 （answered Dec 9, 2013 Tony Huynh PhD in the Department of Combinatorics & Optimization at the University of Waterloo.） I also like this version of the riddle. To answer the actual question though, I would say that it is not possible to guess incorrectly with probability only 1/N, even for N=2. In order for such a question to make sense, it is necessary to put a probability measure on the space of functions f:N→R. Note that to execute your proposed strategy, we only need a uniform measure on {1,…,N}, but to make sense of the phrase it fails with probability at most 1/N, we need a measure on the space of all outcomes. The answer will be different depending on what probability space is chosen of course.
Here's a concrete choice for a probability space that shows that your proposal will fail. Suppose that for each index i we sample a real number Xi from the normal distribution so that the Xis are independent random variables. If there is only person, no matter which boxes they view, they gain no information about the un-opened boxes due to independence. Thus, their probability of guessing correctly is actually 0, not (N-
