Tuesday, January 12, 2010

ANCIENT MATH TEAM PROBLEM

A group of 17 math team members stole a sack of donuts. When they tried to divide the donuts into equal portions, 3 donuts remained. In the ensuing brawl over who should get the extra donuts, Mark sneaked out the back door to get to the lunchroom. He was intercepted by a dean which told him "Not so fast Round Boy." The dean took Mark to the office. Now there were 16 math team members left. They tried to redistribute the donuts again. This time equal division left 10 donuts. Again an argument developed. This time James stuck a paper clip into the electric socket. The lights went out, when they came back on, James had a headache and had to go to the nurse's office. Now there were 15 math team members left and the donuts were evenly distributed among the math team members. What was the least number of donuts that could have been in the sack?
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4 comments:

  1. romeJanuary 12, 2010 at 11:24 PM

    I think it turns out to be a lot of donuts. But the real question is: did they also steal the sack designated as the HOME sack of donuts?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJanuary 15, 2010 at 8:47 AM

    2 things.

    1. Words cannot express how excited I am that c/o '93 is representing this math problem on your blog--we were the perfect class for theft-and-donut-related math.

    2. You would not be proud of how I got there, but I have an answer. 810 donuts. Is that right?

    Steven Beil

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 15, 2010 at 8:49 AM

    No. That's not right at all. Scratch that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JeffJanuary 19, 2010 at 8:22 AM

    Thanks for the math team challenge Mr. Amaro! Feel free to post more if you'd like to...It made for a fun start to my work day.

    The answer I came up with is 3930 donuts.

    I wish you the best with the Rocky Raccoon 100! I ran a couple half marathons this past year, I can't imagine going over 7 times as far.

    c/o '99

    - Jeff Kleinlein

    ReplyDelete

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