November 2009
12 posts
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Answer: Tuesday Teaser #8
Let’s work through this one logically, but before that let’s give some random names to our party guests to make it all a little easier. Suppose the guests are:
Adam || Angela
Bruno || Beatrice
Chris (me!) || Chloe
Darren || Danielle
Ewan || Emma
Given the three observations, nobody can possibly shake more than 8 hands (everyone except themselves and their guest). Now there are...
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Tuesday Teaser #8
Last week, I held a party with four of my friends. Each of us brought along a guest to make the total number of attendees ten. Upon arrival, all of the attendees exchanged greetings, but only some of them shook hands. In particular:
Nobody shook their own hand
Nobody shook the hand of the guest that they brought along with them
Nobody shook hands with anybody more than once
After the party,...
3 tags
Answer: Tuesday Teaser #7
There are several answers to this problem. My favourite way is for the first person to add a random number to his salary and then tell the sum to the second person. The second person would then add his salary to the sum and tell the third person. Each person would then continue in this way until the last person adds on his salary and tells the first person. The first person can now subtract his...
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Tuesday Teaser #7
A group of friends are enjoying dinner together when one of them says that he’d like to know the average salary of the group. They are all reluctant to share their salary with the others in the group, but are equally quite interested to know the average salary of the group. Can you find a way in which they can find the average without anyone having to disclose their salary to anyone else?
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I’ve been looking through my South American travel photos recently (possibly something to do with having to spend most of my waking life behind a desk) and one thing that has struck me is the incredible scale of all that we saw. The awesome white expanse of the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt lake, is a great example of this. It’s four times the size of my native...
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