REMINDERS: Answers in red. Solvers (submitted/correct) in blue. (Forgive any omissions, but feel free to inform.) Comments in green. For further elaboration on solutions, please feel free to ask!
- (This one is actually designed for the brand new subscribers who are Math Buddy volunteers (with young children) in Springfield, but of course anyone may answer!) Find the next 3 entries in this sequence: 1, *, 2, **, 3, ***, 4, ____, ____, ____. ****, 5, ***** Jim Waterman, Anita Dixon
- What’s the smallest whole number that’s a multiple of 1,2,3,4,5, and 6? 60 Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
- Find the only pair of whole numbers whose product is one million, yet neither whole number has a zero in it. 64 and 15,625 Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
(Another one for the Math Buddy volunteers (see #1) but I think this one might be fun and/or challenging for any of us! For full credit, also list the numbers found. 1,2,3,4,6,8,9 (and one answer found a 7!? ) Rita Barger, Anita Dixon- What is the largest whole number such that 7 times it is still less than 1000? 142 Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
- List one number between 1.999 and 2. If this is not possible, mark NP and tell why. 1.9991 (just one of an infinite number of correct answers.) Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
- (A repeat? One of my classic favorites!) A man buys a horse for $60, sells it for $70, buys it back for $80, and sells it one last time for $80. How much money, if any, did the man make on the series of transactions? He made $10. Rita Barger, Anita Dixon I thought I had typed $90 for the very last amount (the usual way the problem is stated), but alas I didn’t, so the correct answer is $10 – as I posted it – and Anita & Rita caught it!!
- What whole number less than 50 has the largest number of factors? 48. (10 factors) Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
- Frank Farmer bought 2568 inches of fencing. He immediately used five yards for a small animal pen. How many feet of fencing were left after that? 199 ft. Rita Barger, Anita Dixon, Frank Green
- How many gallons of gasoline could be saved in one year by a fuel-efficient (non-electric :-)) car getting 32 miles per gallon over a gas-guzzler getting 14 mpg? (Assume average yearly mileage is 9000 miles.) Roughly 361 gallons. Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
- From a square of side 1, a new square is formed by connecting the midpoints of each side. What is the area of the new square? 1/2 sq. units. Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
- A pizza company advertises that its 18-inch (diameter) party pizza has more pizza that two medium (12-inch) pizzas. Are they right? Yes. The party pizza has area 81*pi sq in, while the two medium pizzas add up to 72*pi sq. in. Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
All kinds of different interpretations here, believe it or not [ask for details, if you dare], so for a variety of reasons, I took anything close to 14, 15, 16, or 17. 🙂 Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
Short. Rita Barger, Anita Dixon, Don Hayes- You have four colored chips – 2 black, 1 yellow, and 1 white. The are in a horizontal line, left to right. The white chip is directly to the left of a black chip, and neither black chip is on an end. How are the colored chips aligned? W, B, B, Y. Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
- See #15. Same set-up, but the chips are now 2 red, 1 yellow, and 1 green. The yellow chip is not on an end, and the two ends are different colors. The red chips are not adjacent, and the green chip is on the far right. How are the chips aligned now? R, Y, R, G Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
- (These last two are also repeats, AND they are added in honor of the MSTA subscribers!) Find the largest fraction that a) has a denominator of 17, and b) when added to 1/3, keeps a sum less than 1. Technically the answer is 11/17, but I also took 11, with misplaced focus on numerator. Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
- If a certain book is 4th from the left on a bookshelf, and also 6th from the right on the same shelf, how many books are on the shelf? 9 Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
Bonus #1 (a repeat). If you were spelling out the whole numbers, how far would you have to go before you first used the letter a ? One thousAnd. Linda Ward, Frank Green, Rita Barger, Jim Waterman, Anita Dixon (This may be one of the rare – if not only – time(s) a Bonus answer has more correct solutions than any of the BTs !)
Bonus #2 See #4 above. Can you design something similar to above (or entirely different if you choose) that has more hidden numbers than the figure above does? (I believe the hidden conditions is that they all must be connected.) No brave takers.
Bonus #3 See #8 above. Can you find the smallest whole number with exactly 10 factors? 48. Frank Green, Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
Bonus #4: See # 11 above. What if the original square has side x ? (x^2)/2 Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
Bonus #5: Arrange these four numbers from smallest to largest. (If any are equal, put = signs between them) π, 3.14, 22/7, 3.1416 3.14, π, 3.1416, 22/7 Rita Barger, Anita Dixon
Next time I have a math conundrum I will want to contact Rita and Anita : )