Carnegie Mellon professor Austin Z. Henley recently built a simulator to solve a deceptively simple puzzle from 3Blue1Brown. The challenge involves a ladybug starting at 12 o'clock, moving randomly to adjacent hour markers until all are visited. The question: what's the probability it ends on 6? Henley's initial intuition about the result was wrong.

Running thousands of simulations, his code revealed a surprising truth. Contrary to expectations that the farthest point (6) might be most likely, the results showed all numbers from 1 to 11 have an equal chance of being the final stop. The probability for each is exactly 1/11, a counterintuitive outcome for this random walk problem.

This project highlights how computational experiments can challenge our mathematical intuition. Henley's simple JavaScript simulator made the abstract puzzle tangible. The exercise underscores the value of testing hypotheses with code, especially for problems where human guesses often lead us astray. It's a perfect example of learning through building.

For those intrigued, the next logical question is the average number of steps required to visit all 12 markers. Henley invites others to ponder that answer, turning a quick weekend project into an ongoing mathematical curiosity sparked by a viral video and a simple line of code.