On Fri, Sep 28, 2007 at 04:16:11PM -0600, Andy Bradford wrote: > Thus said "Sasha Pachev" on Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:07:52 MDT: > > > You have 100 sheep in a flock and they are all numbered. Each has an > > identification tag with a number - 1 through 100. One of them is lost. > > Other sheep are scattered over the pasture and cannot be examined in > > sequential order of their numbers. Come up with a method that would > > allow you to quickly identify the lost sheep. The use of a simple > > arithmetical calculator is allowed. > > Hopefully its an HP with RPN, but that might violate your roll call > rule. :-) > > Just add up the numbers 1--100 for a total of 5050.
Rather than add them all up, understand that from one to 100 there are 50 pairs of number, each of which adds up to 101. So 50*101... making it easy enough to do on an algebraic calculator. -- Charles Curley /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign Looking for fine software \ / Respect for open standards and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email http://www.charlescurley.com / \ No M$ Word docs in email Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB
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