In my drawer i have ten black socks and ten white socks , i am going out to a party so i need a fresh pair of socks ,as i open the drawer the bulb blows and i can,t see a thing , because i am in a rush to get to the party i stick my hand in and scoop up some socks . what is the minimum amount of socks i can get out to have a matching pair?

eleven?

if you don't care which color, you only need three

Originally posted by Aetherael
if you don't care which color, you only need three

Originally posted by phil3000
In my drawer i have ten black socks and ten white socks , i am going out to a party so i need a fresh pair of socks ,as i open the drawer the bulb blows and i can,t see a thing , because i am in a rush to get to the party i stick my hand in and scoop up some socks . what is the minimum amount of socks i can get out to have a matching pair?

Originally posted by Aetherael
if you don't care which color, you only need three

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Three?

Originally posted by phil3000
[b]got to be a matching pair ,but the answer is three!!!!

I was wrong earlier it's twelve.😳

Originally posted by JerryH
I was wrong earlier it's twelve.😳

A sisterproblem to the socks problem is the following:

I found a sale where I could buy sneakers really cheap. So I bought a dozen. Same size and same colour: white. I spearated each of them to individual choes an put them in a box.
The next day I wanted to have a pair, but the light was out and it was dark as a coalmine. Anyway i thought that
If I take up x number of shoes (all undistinguashable by hand) how many would I have to take in order to be sure that I got one left and one right one?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
A sisterproblem to the socks problem is the following:

I found a sale where I could buy sneakers really cheap. So I bought a dozen. Same size and same colour: white. I spearated each of them to individual choes an put them in a box.
The next day I wanted to have a pair, but the light was out and it was dark as a coalmine. Anyway i thought that
If I ...[text shortened]... y hand) how many would I have to take in order to be sure that I got one left and one right one?

Originally posted by Meadows
I suspect you only bought sneakers for right feet due to the shop experiencing an unprecedented spate of bad dancers buying shoes. Therefore, no pair of sneakers for you 🙁

Originally posted by FabianFnas
I controlled very carefully that in each pair there were one left and one right shoe. That was not the reason I got them so cheap. However, each pair were all white, and identical to eachother.

Originally posted by Meadows
Ah well that was clever of you.

Ok (unless I'm missing a cheeky loophole or something foolish on my part), if you take n shoes, n/2 being left shoes and n/2 being right shoes, you need n/2 + 1 to guarantee that you'll have at least one of each.

In your case you bought 12 so I would presume that you need 7 boxes.