Mathematics

Year 9 Enrichment Day

2010

Logic, Puzzles, Problems and

Paradoxes

By D. English
April 2010
 Introduction – Why am I here?

The activity that you are going to take part in today has been
designed as part of the final year of my degree in Maths and
Economics.

The morning will consist of us working through many of the

problems, puzzles and questions in this booklet BUT these are
slightly different to the questions you may be used to in class.
They are not all directly mathematical, and some are quite fun, but
they all develop some important skills. Some of the questions test
your mathematical skills, such as fractions and basic algebra, but
many are designed to just exercise your brain and make you
THINK! Some are more mathematical than others and some will
require a lot of thought but they are solvable. The questions are
designed to get you talking about solutions so you can hear other
ways of seeing the same problem. The right answer is our goal but
we will also be exploring different ways there as well.

In the afternoon, we will try and tackle a few harder problems.

Some of these were solved by mathematicians many years and
have some famous results.

My hope is that, as some of the more able mathematicians in year

9, these activities will allow you to apply some of the maths you
know and will give you some practice in more general problem
solving skills, such as logical and lateral thought, that will be
useful later on. I will also inform you of the more interesting
historical points about some of the problems and occasionally the
methods for solving them that you will come across in the future.
 The Basics of Solving Maths Questions, Problems or Puzzles.
As with many problems, maths related problems often have variety of
solutions - some longer, some shorter and more elegant. However, I
have found virtually all maths problems (and often many others)
become easier to solve if we take some basic steps. With them,
problems that seem highly complex can become very easy and without
them you might miss or misread something that is vital to success.

Step 1. Read (or listen to) the problem all the way through, without
rushing.

It seems obvious but you would be surprised just how often the phrase:
“I didn’t read the question properly”, can be heard coming out of exam
halls in schools, colleges and universities everywhere. This stage is
vital, make sure that you read the question and understand what you are
being asked to do or find out.

Step 2. Put something on paper.

When you have seen the question write down what you know AND
what you need to find out. Again, this seems obvious but yet again it’s a
vital step that may mean you find out you read something incorrectly in
the first place or it might help you see why a piece of information is
important. What you put down will differ for each question, but in
essence what you are trying to do is bring the parts of the problem
together in front of you in a way that shows how they link together. For
example: a diagram in physics/mechanics or assigning the letters in an
algebra problem and setting out your equation to be solved. Often the
hardest part of solving a problem is finding a good way to write it
down.
 Step 3. Look at the information you have!

When confronted with a question in an exam you have all the

information that you need. Knowing this you must find a way of
solving the problem with the information you know (not find a way to
solve the problem and then fit the numbers). It follows from this that
you should be suspicious if in a class problem, exam or test you don’t
use all the information given. It may well be that it isn’t required but it
is always better to check your solution than to get it wrong because you
left it out.

Step 4. Getting the answer right.

In essence this could be split into a small section on its own but I’ll be
brief. When you have an answer, solution or proof you should ask
yourself some simple questions:
• Is my answer plausible?
• Can I justify my answer?
• If I showed each step in my working out to another person would the
ideas used be clear. And if asked could I show it is correct.

The worst possible mistake is to get no marks when you have actually
done everything correctly. If your answer isn’t clear you get no marks
and the same is true for your working so make sure each line follows
from the other and don’t be afraid to use words within your working to
show how the steps link together.

Step 5. If all else fails.

There are some problems that you won’t be able to solve either because
you haven’t seen a trick or necessary piece of information or just
because you don’t know what to do with it. In this case (as long as a
wrong answer doesn’t lose you marks) there is no harm in making an
educated guess, but make sure you remember the word educated!
 Some Simple Starters

Pylons

Two electricity pylons stand X meters apart. A 60 meter cable

hangs between the pylons and is connected to them at a height of
50 meters. Given the middle of the cable is 20 meters above the
ground, what is the distance X?

A Question of Fractions
Which of these is larger?

1 3
or
3 8

Add Equals Multiply

You know that 2 + 2 = 2 x 2, but how many other pairs of numbers

A and B are there where A + B = A x B

Rope Around the Earth

Suppose you were to wrap a rope around the earth. If you then cut
the rope and added an additional 6 meters, how high would you be
able to lift the rope whilst keeping it the same height all the way
round?
 A Limited Farm
A farmer has several chickens and cows. In total they have 30 eyes
and 44 legs. How many chickens and how many cows are on the
farm?

A Conundrum from Hollywood

The following problem appeared in a film.

A man is faced with a bomb connected to a scale, on which he
must place a jug containing exactly 4 gallons of water to diffuse
the bomb. He is near a fountain and has a 5 gallon and a 3 gallon
jug. Can he do it? (Note: he cannot just guess)

Crossing the Soar

Two children want to cross the River Soar. The only way to get to
the other side is by boat but the boat can only take one boy at a
time. The boat can’t return without a passenger and there are no
ropes or other tricks, yet both boys manage to cross using the boat.
How?
Crossing the Soar 2

A person is running from some angry sheep and wants to cross the
River Soar in a boat. Further down the river on the opposite bank is
a rather scary bull in a paddock. The river is 20 meters across and
flows at a speed of 1 metre per second. The river drags the boat
down stream at a speed of 1 meter per second and the boat has a
speed of 2 meters per second (assume this is instant speed so at all
times it travels at 2 meters per second). If the man wants to travel
directly across the river (without going into the bull’s paddock)
how long will it take him to cross the river?
Oil and Vinegar
You have two barrels, one of oil and one of vinegar, each
containing 7 pints respectively. You remove one pint of vinegar
and mix it with the oil then you take a pint of this mixture and
place it back in the vinegar container. Which barrel contains more
of its original liquid, the one with vinegar or the one with oil?

Passing the buck

Three Leicester businessmen are on a trip to the States together.
When they reach their hotel, they find only one suite is available at
$30 per night. They decide to share the suite and each pay $10
before retiring to bed. When they come to check out, the bellhop
informs them that the manager has refunded them $5 for the
inconvenience of having to share the suite and hopes they will
consider returning.
Realising they can’t split $5 between them, they give $2 to the
bellhop as a tip and split the remaining $3 evenly between them.
Since they have now paid $9 each ($10 for the room and $1 back)
and have given the bellhop $2, they only have $29 dollars
accounted for ((3 x 9) + 2) what happened to the remaining,
thirtieth dollar?
 Some Tougher Problems, Puzzles and
Mathematical Oddities!

An SOS from a Student!

(A classic and commonly used puzzle)

A man receives a letter from his daughter who is studying on the

other side of the country. He is a big fan of puzzles and riddles and
so she includes one in her letter to soften the blow.

Her letter reads:

SEND
MORE
MONEY

Lots of love ……

How does her father know how much to send?

Note each letter represents one digit and no single digit is

represented by two different letters.
 Einstein's Riddle

The story behind Einstein's Riddle is that Albert Einstein created it

in the late 1800s, and claimed that 98% of the world population
couldn't solve it (though its true origins are unclear).

- In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.

- In each house lives a person of different nationality.
- These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage,
use a different brand of washing powder and keep a different pet.
Einstein's riddle is: Who owns the fish?

Necessary clues:
1. The British man lives in a red house.
2. The Swedish man keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Danish man drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the white house.
5. The owner of the green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who uses Persil rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house uses Daz.
8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who uses Fairy lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who uses
Daz.
12. The man who uses Bold drinks cola.
13. The German uses Ecover.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The Fairy-user lives next to the one who drinks water.
 The World’s Most Inefficient Track Design!

A town is planning to build its own underground train network.

The town planning consultants have for some reason asked the
designers to connect the stations in the network directly to one
another, without going through connecting stations (i.e. station 1
must have a single line to stations 2,3,4 and 5).

The initial plan calls for 5 stations, how many lines will be
required to connect the stations?

After some protest at the planning committee, the planners agree to

add two other areas to the network, requiring 2 extra stations. How
many lines will be required now?

The town planners and a track manufacturer now form a

consortium and bid for a network in a major city, this network
should have 101 stations, how many lines would they require now?
 A Percentages Paradox

The table below shows some data from a real life medical study
conducted in the 1980’s. The study was conducted to measure the
effectiveness of a type of treatment for kidney stones. The
treatments were either type A or type B and the following results
were obtained.

Treatment
A B
Success/Total 273/350 289/350

After some discussion, the researchers decided to classify the types

of kidney stones each patient had as small and large and then
looked again at the outcomes. The results are given below.

Treatment
Stone Type A B
Small 81/87 234/270
Large 192/263 55/80

Initially, look at the data given: does anything appear strange?

(Hint: you may need to do some calculations for the ‘paradox’ to
become clear. The title of the question gives you a clue about what
you need to calculate)

Once you’ve found the paradox, have you any idea why it has
occurred?
But why Pi?
 The Tower of Hanoi

This puzzle was designed by French mathematician Edouard Lucas

in 1883. We are given three pins and a tower of seven disks is
stacked on one pin, in decreasing size order from top to bottom as
below.

The aim of the puzzle is to move the tower from the original pin to
one of the others. However, disks can only be moved one at a time
and no disk can have a larger disk placed on top of it.

Lucas also crafted a tale to make his puzzle seem more mysterious.
He said that his tower was a smaller version of the much larger
‘Tower of Brahma’, which supposedly had 64 solid gold disks on 3
diamond needles and were tended to by priests. The tale said that
at the beginning of time, God placed the disks on Earth and
commanded the priests to solve the puzzle. The priests would tend
to the puzzle day and night attempting to solve it and once
completed, the tower would crumble and the world would end.

The questions you have to answer are:

What is the fewest moves in which our puzzle with 7 disks can be
completed?
(A lot harder) How long will the priests take to complete the
Tower of Brahma (assuming they take 1 minute to move one
disk)?