SUMMARY: Solutions & Solvers – Jan/Feb ’20 BTs

REMINDERS: Answers in red.  Solvers (submitted/correct) in blue. (Forgive any omissions, but feel free to inform.) Comments in green. For further elaboration, please feel free to ask! 

  1. What is the value of this fraction?  (6 – 9 x 7) / (6 + 4 x 3)  -57/18, or -3 1/6.  (Don’t forget order of operations.)  Frank Green, Amy Ragsdale
  2. A palindrome is a number that reads the same forwards and backwards.  How many palindromes are there between 1 & 100? 9 (11, 22, . . . 99)   Frank Green, Amy Ragsdale, Alexis Avis
  3. A group of teenagers went into a fast-food restaurant. They each bought exactly the same thing and their total bill was $44.11.  How many were in the group? 11 (Only # dividing amount evenly.)  Frank Green, Amy Ragsdale, Alexis Avis
  4. How many whole numbers are between the square roots of 8 and 80? 6 (3, 4, . . . 8)  Frank Green, Amy Ragsdale, Alexis Avis
  5. The average score of 6 tests is 93 (on a scale of 0 – 100).  What is the lowest possible grade on any one test? 58  Frank Green, Amy Ragsdale, Alexis Avis
  6. The sides of a triangle are 8, 15, and 17 units.  If each side is doubled, what is the area of the new triangle? 240  Frank Green, Amy Ragsdale, Don Hayes
  7.  Consider the spellings of the counting numbers. A) What number is the first to contain the letter ‘a’?  One thousand. Amy Ragsdale, Alexis Avis  B) What is the only number to be spelled in alphabetical order ? Forty Alexis Avis  C) Same as B, but reverse alphabetical order? One Frank Green, Alexis Avis
  8.   The 22nd and 24th Presidents of the US had the same mother and father, but were not brothers?  How can this be? Same person – Grover Cleveland  (Only President to serve two non-consecutive terms.  Benjamin Harrison served the term in between.)  Frank Green, Amy Ragsdale, Alexis Avis
  9.  Can there ever be two consecutive months with a Friday the 13th?  (Why?) Yes, it can happen in a non-leap year in Feb/Mar. (Feb has 28 days in those years, so exactly 4 weeks, so Feb’s numbering starts again in March.) Otherwise, NO.   Frank Green, Amy Ragsdale, Alexis Avis
  10. The Feb 10 Mailing mentions Year Product Days  (See Wild Cards or Item 4 of this link.)   As mentioned, 2018 has (exactly) 5 of these special dates. A)  What are the 5 YPDs this year? 1/20/20, 2/10, 4/5, 5/4, 10/2 Amy Ragsdale, Alexis Avis  B) Is this the FIRST year this century with (exactly) 5? No.  2018 also had exactly 5.  C) 2012 had 6 YPDs.  Have there been others since then? No.  (The next year with [exactly] 6 is 2030.)
  11. There are five (5) sisters on the main floor of the house, and they are the only ones home..  Ann is reading, Margaret is cooking, Katy is playing chess, and Marie is doing laundry.  What is the fifth sister doing?  Playing chess with Katy! Frank Green, Amy Ragsdale, Alexis Avis
  12. I simply don’t believe the “95%”.  I’ll bet many of you can get it!

Assuming the same view from every angle, making each of the 4 levels a square, there would be 16 + 9 + 4 + 1 = 25 balls.  Frank Green.  Granted, picture is slightly misleading, so alternate explanation(s) considered, but none matched interpretation(s).

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For the first time in over 5 years, no one submitted a solution (correct or not) to any Bonus problem! COLOR ME BLUE 🙁  I’ll probably carry at least some of them over.
BONUS 1:  Refer to the humorous ‘proof’ that all numbers are interesting.   The technique used there won’t work in the infinite case (no ‘smallest’ number necessarily!)  Can you think of a similar approach to the ‘proof’ that would work?
BONUS 2: Refer to #2 above.  How many palindromes are there between 100 and 1000?
BONUS 3: Refer to #10 above.  Are there any YPDs in any century with seven (7) or more YPDs?
BONUS 4: