Design of Experiment -- twelve coins

[John Denker <jsd@AV8N.COM>]

[cross-posted to chemed-l and phys-l]

I wrote up a discussion of the famous Twelve Coins puzzle,
making connections to fundamental scientific disciplines
such as
 -- Design of Experiment (test-vector design)
 -- Information theory (entropy)
 -- Communication theory (codeword design)

To illustrate the power of the method, I designed a _parallel_
algorithm ... that is, it is not necessary to use the results
of earlier weighings to design the later weighings.

  http://www.av8n.com/physics/twelve-coins.htm