The math problem is solved!
In this morning's Cliff, I wrote about a math problem that stumped participants of a trivia contest last week. Reader Mark Steinman explained how organizers of Are You Smarter Than A Middle Schooler? got their answer.
"After assessing the problem for awhile, here’s MY explanation on why ‘48’ is the right answer.
If Bella gave 1/6 of her 48 candies to Jacob, that would mean 8 were provided leaving her with 40.
Then if Bella gave ¼ of the remaining 40 to Alice, that would mean 10 were provided leaving her with 30.
Then if Bella gave ½ of the remaining 30 to Edward, that would mean 15 were provided leaving her with 15.
And then I suspect, given it was candy, Bella ate one. That would leave 14!
48 is the ‘right’ answer!"
What do you think?
Monday, October 5, 2009
Bella ate the candy
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2 comments:
Probably a typo in the question.
Replace "if she had 14 pieces left" with "if she had 4 pieces left".....and the answer comes out to be:
48
at best, a poorly worded question. what do the organizers say about how to calculate this?
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