The Unexpected Hanging Paradox.

The unexpected Hanging Paradox is a paradox about a person's expectations about the timing of a future event. This paradox is a situation of mathematic rules applied in wrong situations in real life; Let me explain you:

A judge condemns a prisoner on death row to be hanged next week by the warden, but before leaving, he makes sure the prisoner understands that it is going to be unexpected, so they will not tell him the exact date.

After thinking about how to escape from there, he remember what the warden said: You will be hanged in an unexpected date for you; therefore, the prisoner open his eyes and starts jumping, screaming and celebrating it: He knows he is not going to die.

After reading this, you might think either he is crazy or he has a way to escape, but non of them are right. Let's think about it: The prisoner knows he is going to die be in an unexpected date next week. Then, in case he is not hanged on thursday, then he cannot be hanged on friday, knowing that it would not be unexpected (only 1 day left of the week, obviously he will die on friday because there are no more days in the week, but it would not be unexpected, so it cannot be). Once we have eliminated Friday, same happens with thursday. If on wednesday he was not hanged, he will be on thursday, knowing that there are no more days left. The prisoners applies this hypothesis for the rest of the days of the week, and this makes him reach the conclusion that he will not die next week for sure. Notwithstanding, he is hanged on wednesday at 6 am.

Supposedly, even though the warden's statement to the prisoner was paradoxical, it ended up being true anyway. However, if the prisoner is no better at making inferences than he is in the problem, the warden's statement is true and not paradoxical; the prisoner was executed at noon within the week, and was surprised. This just shows that you can mess with the minds of people who can't make inferences properly. Nothing new there. But in case we follow logic and apply strictly the warden´s statement, and the fact that our prisoner in this case is is able to do all this reasoning, then his statement would be false and paradoxical.

Therefore, in conclusion, depending on the prisoner, I would or would not be able to "escape from the death".

This paradox give us another way of seeing math, in this case probability and way we have to predict future events: Mathematical-rules or statements applied in wrong situations give us results not possible in real life.