Philosophy 251

General Information for Completing Writing Assignments:

(i) Each assignment is worth up to ten points. You will get one point for providing the correct answer and up to nine points for clearly and concisely justifying whatever answer you give. Note, that the emphasis is on justifying your solution regardless of whether it is correct or not. (Imagine that you are writing a solution that is to appear in a magazine in which the problem was presented in an earlier issue. Hence, you need to clearly and fully explain why the answer is the way it is, such that the readers will understand exactly why the answer is the way it is.) Below are some questions that I will ask when evaluating your assignments.

1. Is the answer clearly stated and identified as the answer?
2. Is the answer answering the question asked?
3. Does the student justify the answer actually given?
4. Does the student fail to account for (or contradict) a relevant fact from the problem?
5. Does the student make any assumptions not warranted by the problem?
6. Does the student contradict him/herself in the answer or justification?
7. Would the justification be understandable to someone who has read the problem, but does not know the answer?

(ii) All assignments must be your own individual and independent work and be pledged. By 'your own individual and independent work' I understand that the student will not have discussed the assignment with any other individual or looked at any other individual's solution prior to the assignment being handed in.

(iii) All assignments are to be done on separate sheets of paper. Each sheet of paper must have your name on it.

(iv) Late assignments receive no credit.

The Coin

You and a friend need to decide, fairly, who is going to ask the Professor for a hint to the Bonus Problem. Between you, you have but a single coin and you both know that it is biased. Unfortunately, neither of you know what the bias is except that it is not a trick coin, i.e. a coin that always comes up heads or a coin that always comes up tails.

Is it possible for you and your friend to use, via flipping, the biased coin to fairly determine, i.e. each of you has an equal chance of winning/losing, who should ask the Professor for a hint? Justify your answer.