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Tue 13 Jan, 2004 10:53 pm
YOU HAVE 10 TREES TO PLANT IN A GROVE, YOU WANT 4 ROWS OF 5 TREES EACH (IN EACH ROW)...HOW WOULD YOU DO IT?
Are you sure you don't mean 5 rows of 4 trees.
I reckon Adrian is right. Are you absolutely sure you mean four rows with five trees in each row?
It can be done with coins though
Yeah... doing it with coins doesn't involve so much digging. Stellar suggestion Mungo.
You are unquestionably right about the digging, Seal, but I was using imaginary trees, so I had my imaginary gardener do the digging. I still couldn't solve it for trees
Mrs. SealPoet is the gardener, and as a Landscape Designer, she is a star tree arranger. Me, I'm the shovel: I dig where I'm told.
SealPoet wrote:Mrs. SealPoet is the gardener, and as a Landscape Designer, she is a star tree arranger. Me, I'm the shovel: I dig where I'm told.
Only if it IS 5 rows with four trees in each.
I'm more sure than ever that there is some mistake.
I calculate that, given the wording of the question and that any arrangement of lines can be chosen, the fewest trees you would need to get four rows with five trees in each row would be fourteen trees.
The fewest with four rows of four trees would be ten trees.
The fewest with four rows of three trees would be six trees.
The fewest for five rows of four trees would also be ten trees.
I can show the reasoning if anyone is interested.
{Trivial to do four rows of three with five...} <- edit. I really have to think before posting! Nevermind...
...Yeah Frank... somehow I missed that.
Let's assume that the question is, indeed, 4 rows of five trees each with ten trees.
Well... I can do 6 rows of 5 trees using 10 trees...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
First row goes from #1 to #5, sixth row goes from #6 to #10.
Don't think that's quite what was asked for, do you?
Seal
You say you can do six rows of five trees using ten trees. I'd be very interested in seeing that. I am satisfied that fifteen would be required and both of us can't be right. If I am wrong I prefer to know that I am.
Im afraid that the explanation you have already given is not - or I am not - exactly clear.
Seal Poet is correct -- and his explanation is clear to me.
Put all ten in a row.
1,2,3,4,5 make up the first row.
2,3,4,5,6 make up the second row.
3,4,5,6,7 make up the third row....et.
That sounds like one row of ten to me, with some fast and shifty footwork thrown in. Somewhat similar to saying that triangles can have four sides because you have the option of calling the hypotenuse two sides at a 180 degree angle to one another. Which then gives the sum of the interior angles of a triangle as 360 degrees. Or, by extension, as many sides as fashion demands with the sum of the angles any multiple of 180 degrees.
'The square of the sum of as many hypotenuse as you care to specify . . . '
"If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?"
"Four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg"
And similarly:
"How many straight lines is one straight line if you call one line six lines?"
Using a slight variation on the 'Seal-Frank' method (the S-K method) it is quite easy to have four rows each with five trees using no more and no less than ten trees (It could be done with five, but the question said ten)
We lay out two parallel rows of five trees. If the S-K method allows one row to be considered as six rows then it must allow one row to be considered as two rows. If each of the parallel rows is regarded as being two rows and if each of the parallel rows has five trees on it then we have four rows each with five trees and we have used ten trees.
It is possible, using the S-K method, to have an infinite number of rows with each of the rows having five trees on it using only five trees.
There is however a drawback with the original version of the S-K method which still exists with the variation. When the trees have been planted and you send your bill to the owner of the plantation, it seems likely that when you say "That row of ten trees is in fact six rows of trees" you might have some extensive explaning to do. Even more so when he sees that the plantation he'd asked for in the question turns out to be a single file.
Mungo wrote:Using a slight variation on the 'Seal-Frank' method (the S-K method) it is quite easy to have four rows each with five trees using no more and no less than ten trees (It could be done with five, but the question said ten)
We lay out two parallel rows of five trees. If the S-K method allows one row to be considered as six rows then it must allow one row to be considered as two rows. If each of the parallel rows is regarded as being two rows and if each of the parallel rows has five trees on it then we have four rows each with five trees and we have used ten trees.
It is possible, using the S-K method, to have an infinite number of rows with each of the rows having five trees on it using only five trees.
There is however a drawback with the original version of the S-K method which still exists with the variation. When the trees have been planted and you send your bill to the owner of the plantation, it seems likely that when you say "That row of ten trees is in fact six rows of trees" you might have some extensive explaning to do. Even more so when he sees that the plantation he'd asked for in the question turns out to be a single file.
I think SealPoet was using irony here, Mungo -- and I suspect he knew it. That was the reason he gave the caveat at the end of his post.
I was simply seconding his irony -- and pointing out that I thought his explanation was clear.
Now, with your help, we all know what we knew before. This was not what Excaliber had in mind.
Wonder where he/she is. Ex never did come back to confirm if the initial wording was incorrect -- as we all suspect it is.
Frank
Sure I saw his irony. How come you expect me to see irony but you don't see mine?
"Now with your help we all know what we knew before". Being patronising isn't really your style, Frank.
Mungo wrote:Frank
Sure I saw his irony. How come you expect me to see irony but you don't see mine?
But you are assuming I didn't, because apparently, you didn't see my second bout of irony. (Boy, this could go on forever!)
Quote:"Now with your help we all know what we knew before". Being patronising isn't really your style, Frank.
"You have no idea," he responded, sounding for all the world like Jeremy Irons in his role of Claus von Bulow.
Bookmark.
Check for any survivors!
trees
Brain Teaser
a man buys 10 evergreens at the nursery. He plants them in 5 rows of 4. HOW??
evieduke33: That was the question we thought we were answering. The answer is up there... but you have to look for it.
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