Interview Puzzles :: Discussion

There are n persons in a circle, numbered 1 thru n. Going around the circle, every second person is removed from the circle, starting with person number 2, 4, and so on. Show that the number of the last person remaining in the circle can be obtained by writing n in binary, then moving the leftmost 1 to the right. So for example, with n = 13 persons (1101 in binary), the last person is number 11 (1011 in binary).