A Competitive Algorithm for the Counterfeit Coin Problem

Abstract

The classical counterfeit coin problem asks for the minimum number of weighings on a balance scale to find the counterfeit coin among a set of n coins. The classical problem has been extended to more than one counterfeit coin, but the knowledge of the number of counterfeit coins was previously always assumed. In this paper we assume no such knowledge 0and propose an algorithm with uniform good performance.KeywordsEqual WeightBalance ScaleCompetitive AlgorithmBinary AlgorithmCoin ProblemThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.