Josephus

Okay kiddo, so Josephus is actually a guy's name! He was a historian who lived a very long time ago in ancient Rome.

One of the things Josephus is famous for is a story about a group of soldiers who were facing death. They didn't want to die, so they all agreed on a plan.

The plan was that they would stand in a circle and count off in a certain order. Then, starting with the first soldier, they would count around the circle and the soldier who ended up with the last number would be killed. Then they would start again with the soldier next to the one who was killed and keep going until only one soldier was left standing.

This counting and killing continued until only one soldier was left, the winner! This game is now called the "Josephus problem" because Josephus wrote about it in his books.

The Josephus problem is actually a pretty famous math problem that has to do with figuring out who the last person standing will be if you keep eliminating people in a certain order. It can be solved using some fancy math techniques called induction and recursion, but we'll save that for when you're a little bit older!