Laura has 2010 lamps connected with 2010 buttons in front of her. For each button, she wants to know the corresponding lamp. In order to do this, she observes which lamps are lit when Richard presses a selection of buttons. (Not pressing anything is also a possible selection.) Richard always presses the buttons simultaneously, so the lamps are lit simultaneously, too.
a) If Richard chooses the buttons to be pressed, what is the maximum number of different combinations of buttons he can press until Laura can assign the buttons to the lamps correctly?
b) Supposing that Laura will choose the combinations of buttons to be pressed, what is the minimum number of attempts she has to do until she is able to associate the buttons with the lamps in a correct way? combinatoricscoding theory