Monday, February 18, 2008

Alien Division

Alien's "calculator" scanned twenty humans in four houses, immediately six showed up in the "calculator's" display.

What will the "calculator" show if the number of humans are ten distributed in five houses?

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22 Comments:

Anonymous gbusman said...

I'll go with 3...

(houses + humans) / houses

February 18, 2008 1:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yeah ill say 3 too...

February 18, 2008 1:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yeah ill say 3 too...

February 18, 2008 1:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yeah ill say 3 too...

February 18, 2008 1:51 PM  
Blogger Ben said...

3 :p, but aliens suck at programming!

February 18, 2008 3:40 PM  
Anonymous Zack Redstar said...

3

20 people in four houses and the answers is 6. times 6 by 4 you get 24 which equals houses + people

10 people add 5 houses = 15 divide by 5 houses equals 3

February 18, 2008 4:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, why can't the smart people like me wait for others to try before giving away the answer?

February 18, 2008 4:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cannot be Three (There is no logic in the explaination given)

Why would alien add houses with humans ? They are different.

February 18, 2008 5:14 PM  
Anonymous Keenan said...

3....
1st scan is 20 humans in four houses, 20/4 or 5/1 or 6
2nd scan is 10 humans in fives hoses, or 10/5 or 2/1 or 3.

Weird logic, but that is the only pattern I can see. :)

February 18, 2008 5:32 PM  
Blogger Eric said...

I'm thinking outside the box and say 6 (Humans + Houses, then add the numbers in the final number together.) I guess it could be because with only 1 example it could be anything that your mind can think of

February 18, 2008 6:46 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yeah, this is one of those where it works no matter which way you try it, so i could say

20 * 4 = 80 + 20 / 4 = 85 - 25 = 60 / 10 = 6

just to be random, and then try it again with the second one, so it'd be

10 * 5 = 50 + 10 / 5 = 52 - 25 = 27 / 10 = 2.7

so basically there's no right or wrong answer, therefore, i think a better question would tell you the answer from the second one, and ask you to figure out the relationship

February 18, 2008 8:19 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Hmm. What would the alien want to know? How about how many people are apt to be encountered in any house. If the 20 people were divided equally you would have 5 in each of the 4 houses but that's unlikely. A 'safer' guess might be 6.

In the second case 2 in every house seems equally unlikely so I think I'd go for 3 as well.

Picking at random how many people are you going to find in a single house.

You could work out the actual (highest probability) number with standard deviation and a bell curve but that's more effort than I care to give the problem.

It makes more sense than sum of the digits (Of course 6 on an alien calculator may mean it's lunch time so the correct answer is orange)

February 18, 2008 10:59 PM  
Anonymous Euclid's Brother said...

Well, i'll give a different answer, just because I like to be different. I'll say 2.4

If the numbers are all in base 12, then 20/4 = 6 and 10/5 = 2.4

Converted to base 10 for us humans, it would be 24/4 = 6 and 12/5 = 2.4

February 19, 2008 8:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

mine is strange but i say 3 because, if distributed equal, 5 humans per house plus one in one of them for the alien to move in as after a body snatch in the first problem woulds make 6, that's the logic (i think) for the second as well

February 19, 2008 10:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i say 3, because it's the number of letters for each number :
t w e n t y = 6
t e n = 3

February 19, 2008 11:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

20 humans in 4 houses
20/4=6

10 humans in 5 houses
10/5=2
duh

February 19, 2008 8:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

20/4=6??
nice..

February 20, 2008 7:04 AM  
Anonymous mmlauser said...

Yeah, 'duh' yourself!
I am also going with the answer that you can get just about anything you want.
However, it does make sense for the answer to be three. Thinking as an earthling, that is.

February 20, 2008 10:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

to mmlauser : different anonymous :)

February 22, 2008 12:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

3 but i guess thats why they keep crashing.

February 22, 2008 3:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ITS 2
heres why
10/5=2 because 5 goes into 10 2 times
DUH

February 24, 2008 9:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

7 or 7.5...

February 27, 2008 12:11 PM  

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