Can 13, 15 and 17 chameleons become one colour
Question
On an island live red, green and blue chameleons. Whenever two chameleons of different colours meet, both switch to the third colour; nothing else changes colours. Is it possible that at some point every chameleon has the same colour?
Short answer
No. A meeting changes the three counts by in some order, which leaves every pairwise difference unchanged modulo . To end with one colour, two counts must both be , a difference of , but the initial differences are , and , none divisible by .
Adapted from Zhou, A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews, sec. 2.7 Modular Arithmetic, 'Chameleon colors', p.25; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
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