A little Problem...
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Very sensible
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204 minutes
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howd you get that?
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is it not the famous Hanoï tower?
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fwiw, the way i figured it out was by physically doing the puzzle in sketchup with 2,3,4 & 5 discs then looking for a pattern..
my results were
3
7
15
31which i realized was the same a 4,8,16,32,64,etc minus 1..
then i had to find a big enough calculator to figure out the rest..i'm sure there's a way to do this using formulas but i'm more of a hands on type
similar math is applied to this question:
would you rather I give you $5000 right now -or- give you a penny right now, 2 pennies tomorrow, 4 pennies the next day etc.. for an entire month?
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Only Bill Gates and a few other chaps have enough spare change to pay the amount you would owe me, Jeff ($10,737,418.23), so I prefer you give me the $5,000 today.
EDIT: I mistook pennies for dollars and 5000 for 500, so I updated my post.
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Pilou, it is indeed the towers of hanoi problem.
In a similar vein there is the wheat and chessboard story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem
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@ecuadorian said:
Only Bill Gates and a few other chaps have enough spare change to pay the amount you would owe me, Jeff ($10,737,418.23), so I prefer you give me the $5,000 today.
EDIT: I mistook pennies for dollars and 5000 for 500, so I updated my post.
haha, okay Miguel.. the check is in the mail!
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@remus said:
Well done people, its not a trick question: 2 is the correct answer as ecuadorian said (and the scales are the 1st type you posted jeff.)
edit: doh, put 3 instead of 2. Corrected.
Wait, thought it was 2.
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