THIN K IN G A N A LY T I CA LLY
Spy catcher
BY JOHN TOCZEK
John Toczek is the senior director
of Decision Support and Analytics for
ARAMARK Corporation in the Global
Operational Excellence group. He
earned a bachelor of science degree
in chemical engineering at Drexel
University (1996) and a master’s
degree in operations research from
Virginia Commonwealth University
(2005). He is a member of INFORMS.
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Your government has lost track
of a high profile foreign spy and they
have requested your help to track
him down. As part of his attempts to
evade capture, the spy has employed a
simple strategy. Each day the spy moves
from the country that he is currently in to a
neighboring country.
The spy cannot skip over a country (for example,
he cannot go from Chile to Ecuador in one day). The
movement probabilities are equally distributed among
the neighboring countries. For example, if the spy is currently in Ecuador, there is a 50 percent chance he will move
to Colombia and a 50 percent chance he will move to Peru.
The spy was last seen in Chile and will only move about
countries that are in South America. He has been moving
about the countries for several weeks.
Question: Which country is the spy most likely hiding in
and how likely is it that he is there?
Send your answer to [email protected] by June 15.
The winner, chosen randomly from correct answers, will
receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card. Past questions can be
found at puzzlor.com.
A N A LY T I C S - M A G A Z I N E . O R G
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