Cole Elliott

10-13-17

Pow 2 King Arthur's Table

You have to find an equation, or procedure that can give you a seat at Arthur's table no
matter how many people are sitting around it. The catch is that King Arthur starts at seat
1 and says you're in. Then goes to seat two and says you're out. Seat three is in. Seat
four is out. And so on. So every other seat is out until only one chair remains. Your task
is to find an equation, or procedure that gives you exactly what seat you should sit in.

Here you can see a visual representation

of the table as well as some rules and our
final equation to solve the problem.
 To start off we solved the problem with differing
amounts of knights sitting at the table. The numbers on the left are how many knights
are at the table and the numbers on the right are exactly which chair you should sit in to
win. We tried to find patterns in these numbers but none of the ones that we found
helped. One pattern was that there was what we called a reset. It was when the winning
chair was one. After a few numbers the winner would reset back to one and the next
few would be chairs, 3, 5, and 7. This pattern continues until the next reset is found.
Our final equation that we found was x-(2y)*2 + 1. The y expressed in this equation is
meant to be an exponent but I couldnt figure out how to show it on google docs. To
solve for any number of knights at the table you start by finding the lowest exponent of 2
that is under the amount of knights. So if there are 14 knights at the table then the
lowest exponent of two under 14 is 8. Then you take the number of knights and subtract
is from the lowest exponent of 2. So for 14 you would take 14-8 to equal 6. Then you
multiply 6 by 2 which is twelve. Then add 1 to get thirteen, Which as you can see in the
picture above is the chair you should sit in to win if there are fourteen knights at the
table.
Overall I think I did well on this POW but I couldnt have done it without my group. We
solved it together. It was challenging but not so challenging that it made us want to give
up.
In my opinion everyone in my group should receive an A for this POW because we
equally helped solve it. I think I met the requirements for the final write up as well so
overall personally I think I deserve an A for this POW.