Way way OT but someone might know

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 14:00:55 -0500, Mark Lloyd
wrote:


There's also "if 1 and a half chickens lay 1 and a half eggs in 1 and a
half days, how many eggs will 9 chickens lay in 9 days?"


54

If 1 and a half chickens lay 1 and a half eggs in 1 and a half days,
then 1 chicken can lay 1 egg in 1 and a half days.

Multiply the day and a half by six to make 9 days, and that same
chicken can now lay 6 eggs.

If one chicken can lay six eggs (in any amount of time), then 6
chickens can lay 54 eggs.

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 14:00:55 -0500, Mark Lloyd
wrote:


There's another strange one I heard once. This takes 6 identical sticks
(perhaps you could imagine them). I'm thinking of toothpicks...

Take 3 of the sticks and arrange them as a triangle.

Take 2 of the sticks and add them to the previous arrangement to make 2
triangles (one side is shared).

Take the last stick and add it to the above to make 4 triangles. You are
not allowed to cut, bend, or stretch any stick.

The solution is easy but some people find it impossible.


The solution is to make the two triangles into a three dimensional
figure, not a two dimensional one. Reshape the two triangles so that
the two farthest apart points are above the plane, one toothpick
apart, then connect them with the sixth toothpick.

In article , lid says...

On 06/11/2015 11:51 AM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 12:48:45 -0400, Tim Slattery
wrote:

Mark Lloyd wrote:


Which US state is the easternmost?

Alaska, because it extends across the 180th meridian (but *not* across
the International Date Line, which zig-zags around the tip of the
Aleutian islands). It's also the Northernmost and Westernmost.


Yup......


There's another strange one I heard once. This takes 6 identical sticks
(perhaps you could imagine them). I'm thinking of toothpicks...

Take 3 of the sticks and arrange them as a triangle.

Take 2 of the sticks and add them to the previous arrangement to make 2
triangles (one side is shared).

Take the last stick and add it to the above to make 4 triangles. You are
not allowed to cut, bend, or stretch any stick.

The solution is easy but some people find it impossible.

Pyramid shape

There's also "if 1 and a half chickens lay 1 and a half eggs in 1 and a
half days, how many eggs will 9 chickens lay in 9 days?"

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:04:30 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

[snip]

Again, ambiguity traps you. Fact is, most people parse "2 times more" as

It is not ambiguous.

"twice as much". Insisting that your parsing is the correct one

That people misparse it does not make it ambiguous.

misunderstands how language means.

It is correct. "2 times more" does not mean, for example, "twice
as much".

Yesterday, my student that I tutor in math had a misunderstanding
on 10 / 0.5. The answer is not 5 as he thought. Many other people
would make the same mistake, but that does not make it correct.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 12:07:06 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

[snip]

And don't forget that it also works if the ring is half a mile in
diameter, 1.3 of a mile in diameter, 1.4 of a mile in diameter, and so
on. You simply have to walk around the ring 2, 3, 4, or so on times.
There are an infinite number of rings and an infinite number of point
one mile north of any point on any of the rings.

Not diameter! Circumference.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 13:50:23 -0700, Gene Wirchenko
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 12:07:06 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

[snip]

And don't forget that it also works if the ring is half a mile in
diameter, 1.3 of a mile in diameter, 1.4 of a mile in diameter, and so
on. You simply have to walk around the ring 2, 3, 4, or so on times.
There are an infinite number of rings and an infinite number of point
one mile north of any point on any of the rings.

Not diameter! Circumference.


UGH! DGSGGx SH*T!

You are right of course, and I know that "diameter" is completely
wrong.

A terrible brain fart, and I am embarrassed to have made it!

In article gk0hna1pq376k3v0cthl9hut33qspkt9en@
4ax.com, says...

Sure there is. North of the south pole and southof the north
pole, east does exist.

At what point north of the South Pole does east
commence its existence?

In article ,
says...

In article , lid says...

On 06/11/2015 11:51 AM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 12:48:45 -0400, Tim Slattery
wrote:

Mark Lloyd wrote:


Which US state is the easternmost?

Alaska, because it extends across the 180th meridian (but *not* across
the International Date Line, which zig-zags around the tip of the
Aleutian islands). It's also the Northernmost and Westernmost.


Yup......


There's another strange one I heard once. This takes 6 identical sticks
(perhaps you could imagine them). I'm thinking of toothpicks...

Take 3 of the sticks and arrange them as a triangle.

Take 2 of the sticks and add them to the previous arrangement to make 2
triangles (one side is shared).

Take the last stick and add it to the above to make 4 triangles. You are
not allowed to cut, bend, or stretch any stick.

The solution is easy but some people find it impossible.

Pyramid shape

There's also "if 1 and a half chickens lay 1 and a half eggs in 1 and a
half days, how many eggs will 9 chickens lay in 9 days?"

There's a very simple math equation that "proves" 2 = 1. Can't remember
exact formula you started out with (was something like x2 + y2 = (x + y)
2 - the "2" represents squared). Was only about four lines for proof but
one had to notice there was a divide by zero in it that invalidated what
followed. Saw that in grade 10 and basically freaked till noticed the
problem, most would never see it.

Anyone remember it more exactly?

In alt.windows7.general message kfudna15kjotmivd8h5q5o4h6vref633ak@4ax.
com, Tue, 9 Jun 2015 07:39:51, Ken Blake posted:

If you fly due south from the Detroit airport, what's the first
foreign country you fly over?

The USA, of course - that is the correct answer for roughly 95% of the
world population.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:04:30 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

On 2015-06-11 2:38 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 06/10/2015 09:16 PM, Doug Chadduck wrote:

[snip]

Hey, don't break the box! It makes a mess of people's minds.

Hah!

But so much fun when one can pull it off.

Grin

Maybe whoever made up that test was thinking of the common "fence post"
errors. The way I heard that was you're putting up a 100-foot fence with
a post every 10 feet. How many posts do you need?

The simple (and wrong) answer is 10. Get 10 and you'll have no post to
support the end of that last section.

I see a lot of those 1-off errors. For example, consider a 40-pound sack
of concrete. And somebody tells you a 80-pound sack holds 2 times more.
WRONG. 2 times more is 120 pounds (more is additional).

40-pound sack
2 times that is 80 pounds
2 times more is 40 pounds plus (2 times 40 pounds) = 120 pounds.

Again, ambiguity traps you. Fact is, most people parse "2 times more" as
"twice as much". Insisting that your parsing is the correct one
misunderstands how language means.

I support your theory that most people would parse that as 'twice as much'
since that's how I parsed it, (I've never actually heard someone say 'two
times more', is that a real thing?), and I represent 'most people'. ;-)

--

Char Jackson

On 6/11/2015 1:00 PM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2015-06-11 2:07 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 06/10/2015 07:19 PM, Doug Chadduck wrote:
On 6/9/2015 7:17 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 06/08/2015 10:10 AM, Char Jackson wrote:

[snip]

Those were some of his questions that have stuck with me. Good
times.

one I remember:

If a doctor gives you a bottle of 3 pills then tells you to take one
now
and then 1 each hour, how long do they last?

The answer the teacher wanted was 2 hours.

If you have to take a second pill after one hour and a third pill an
hour later it means that each pill only lasts for one hour. Would not
the answer then be 3 hours?

That was my answer. That teacher called it wrong.

Ambiguous question. The usual parsing is "How long do they [=the supply
of pills] last?", not "How long do they [=each pill] last?"

HTH

This is one of those questions that can be interpreted in more than one
way and there can be more than one answer that an argument could be made
for. Very similar to asking if the half a glass of water is half full or
is it half empty, with the stipulation being that you have to answer one
way or the other. More information is needed before one can answer
correctly.

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 19:58:43 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2015-06-11 5:34 PM, Robert Oppenhighmer wrote:
In article gk0hna1pq376k3v0cthl9hut33qspkt9en@
4ax.com, says...

Sure there is. North of the south pole and southof the north
pole, east does exist.

At what point north of the South Pole does east
commence its existence?

The point right next to it.

Exactly right!

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 19:27:50 -0300, pjp
wrote:


There's a very simple math equation that "proves" 2 = 1. Can't remember
exact formula you started out with (was something like x2 + y2 = (x + y)
2 - the "2" represents squared). Was only about four lines for proof but
one had to notice there was a divide by zero in it that invalidated what
followed. Saw that in grade 10 and basically freaked till noticed the
problem, most would never see it.

Anyone remember it more exactly?


There are two such "proofs" that I remember:

a = b
a^2 = ab
a^2 - b^2 = ab-b^2
a-b)(a+b) = b(a-b)
a+b = b
b+b = b
2b = b
2 = 1

What's wrong with it is the fifth line which is arrived at by dividing
both sides by by a-b. But a-b is zero and it violates the 11th
commandment, thou shalt not divide by zero.


And for those of you who know a little calculus, there is also

kx = x + x + ... + x (k-times) .......................[1]

xx = x + x + ... + x (x-times) .......................[2]

x^2 = x + x + ... + x (x-times) .......................[3]

dx(x^2) = 2x (diff. wrt x) ................................[4]

dx(x + x + ... + x) = 1 + 1 + ... + 1 (x-times) ...........[5]

so 2x = 1 + 1 + ... + 1 (x-times) {from eq. [4],[5]} ....[6]

so we have 2x = x ...........................................[7]

so 2 = 1 (x 0) ......................................[8]


What's wrong with that is taking the derivative of a non-continuous
function.

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 17:22:13 -0700, Stormin' Norman
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 17:10:49 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 19:58:43 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2015-06-11 5:34 PM, Robert Oppenhighmer wrote:
In article gk0hna1pq376k3v0cthl9hut33qspkt9en@
4ax.com, says...

Sure there is. North of the south pole and southof the north
pole, east does exist.

At what point north of the South Pole does east
commence its existence?

The point right next to it.

Exactly right!

Are you the same Ken Blake as Ken Blake, MVP? I have always assumed
so, but that might be a mistake.


Yes, I'm a Microsoft MVP. I've been one since October 2003. There are
three of us here--one other MVPs and one ex-MVP.

In article ,
says...

On 2015-06-11 6:27 PM, pjp wrote:
[...]
There's a very simple math equation that "proves" 2 = 1. Can't remember
exact formula you started out with (was something like x2 + y2 = (x + y)
2 - the "2" represents squared). Was only about four lines for proof but
one had to notice there was a divide by zero in it that invalidated what
followed. Saw that in grade 10 and basically freaked till noticed the
problem, most would never see it.

Anyone remember it more exactly?

No, but I found it. ;-)

http://www.math.toronto.edu/mathnet/...first1eq2.html

Thanks, that was it.