Fruit-full Arithmetic
After several years of intense research, I have come up with path breaking techniques to measure 'CIAQ' - Creativity-In -Arithmetic Quotient. There is wide speculation that this term shall be a topic of teatime discussion in the Mensa circles for several years to come. I have carefully crafted a huge bank of intriguing questions to gauge the student's potential in this area. A minute sample is presented below.
Q: You have 4 apples in your right hand, and 5 in your left hand. So what do you have?
Choices:
1) 9 apples
2) Around 10 apples
3) Many apples
4) Infinite apples. Each of the apples contains seeds of entire family trees of apples.
5) I think you bought a dozen apples. Where are the other five?
6) Unevenly balanced weights in the two hands.
7) Large hands
Students choosing Option 1 shall be debarred from taking the exam. His/her creative-math abilities are perhaps damaged beyond repair. The marking scheme for the other options is still under preparation. Experts are largely undecided on this.
It is further proposed that there be a subjective section wherein given a question, the student shall frame possible choices .Any choices containing accurate answers shall be awarded several negative marks.
One may wonder - why this pressing need to do away with accurate arithmetic? With millions of apples residing on the planet, what do we care about an error of one or two in our apple calculations? These are small matters, unworthy of consuming our precious computing resources. That best describes the spirit of this (m)(ad)venture.
Come. Let us join hands and save the world from entering an endless spiral of needless calculations. The Slogan goes…..
“ Add one to one, does that seem tough?
The sum is one, and that’s close enough! “
9 comments:
You missed out the key (and elementary) option to the sample question. If I have 5 apples on hand and 4 in the other it means that I don't have a bag to put them in, why else would I hold them in my hand?
Awaiting your score!
dude, you forgot another important point... which is there either ought to be another person in your self defined apple-2 hands vector (sub) space (whatever!) - in which case there is another dimension for this subspace .. else there's no possiblity that you could add 4 apples on one hand while your other hand is busy holding 5 other apples, or vice versa or the very many intermediate cases of various combinations of different numbers of apples in different hands.
Plus, tugging on that particular line, if indeed the latter part is possible, you need to explicitly mention whether or not that problem arose instantaneously or if it was the result of successive steps. If such was the case, there exists another solution which can be defined in terms of the earlier step in those successive steps which led to the final problem state. (are you still with me?)
ENJOY :)
well...for starters, i have atleast two hands!
like kunal mentioned , i have a friend to help put those apples on my hand.
In the rare case that i dont have that friend, I can also conclude that (most probably ),since i have four in my right hand, i must be a natural right hander, who first put 4 on my left hand using my right hand, added one more and then picked up four for the right hand.
If however i used both hands to pick the apples, i dont have a sense of symmetry...else i would have had 4 and 4 or 5 and 5 .
If i used my left hand, then i must have put 4 on to my right hand, and instead of maximizing by putting atleast another one there, i took five in my left hand.
Thus i dont have an interest to maximize the number of apples in my hand.
Of course, if there had been only 9 to choose from , then i must more likely have been a right hander like i mentioned above.
So i have atleast two hands, possibly atleast a friend on hand and finally a right hand more favoured than the left. I also dont have an interest in maximizing the apples in my hand.
Finally, if i were standing with so many apples in my hand so that you could ask this question, it also means i had a lot of free time on hand and some ready food on hand.
I think that should do for now for an answer :)
swat
i guess u can omit the absence of sense of symmetry since the question asks "What do you have" and not "What do you not have" :-)
swat
Gentlemen, I'm pleased to announce that all of you have been inducted in to the CIAQ-Research Hall of Fame.
It would not be far-fetched to say that Sherlock Holmes would have have been mighty impressed!
Perhaps the friend kindly volunteered to hold the bag whle arranging the apples in your
hands.Perhaps the friend thought 4 is close enough to 5.May be we ought to invite the friend and evaluate(by having his CIAQ measured of course) his talents in apple placement techniques.These are the issues we need to look into.
All of you are right. Not much left for me to add:)
The first rebel!
Your concluding sentences were:
"Come. Let us join hands and save the world from entering an endless spiral of needless calculations."
The way the comments are headed, this seems unlikely and hence I quit the Hall of fame!
Gentlemen,
it is with great regret that I announce the committe dissolved. A key panel member has resigned, causing much anguish. He is irreplacable.
I shall continue to pour my efforts into this venture and hope to win his confidence and convince him to return . I hope your best wishes are with me in this regard.
I know why this venture did not go any further. Dude! how can you join hands when you have apples in them?
Rafiki - Point!;-) I had not thought about it ! Will be a lil hard to join hands when they are holding apples! Maybe can juggle with the apples, and steal a moment in between to join hands:-)
Post a Comment