Post #157 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger–
Okay, all you brilliant people out there. And I KNOW there are at least some of you! Here’s your chance to prove how awesome you are. End-of-Grade tests (EOGs) are getting close so I found some tricky math problems that I want you to try. Warning: Even I didn’t get all of them right (and I’m pretty good at Math), so if you do, that’s AMAZING!! After you’re done, click on the link at the bottom to take you to the answers and see how you did. Write back and post how you did. Be honest now!
Then try these out on your friends or even your parents. Imagine how proud they’ll be of you if you can get them right and they can’t. Or actually, imagine how much they’ll hate you if that’s true. Anyway, here they are.
1. How many rectangles are there in all in this figure?
a) 6 b) 7 c) 8 d) 9 e) 10 f) 11
2. This one seems really hard, but if you get the trick, it’s EASY! You’ll hardly need any math at all. Here it is: In the NCAA basketball tournament that just ended, the tournament started with 68 teams. How many games did it take in all to determine the final winner? (I’ll give you a big hint: In the FINAL FOUR, there were of course four teams and it took three games to get the champion — the two semifinal games on Saturday night and the final Championship Game on Monday night. So that’s 3 in all. In case you didn’t know, Duke won. And I live in Durham! And my mom went to Duke! So that means… absolutely nothing! They won; I didn’t. But it still made me happy!)
If you think about it, that is a great hint above. So anyway, how many games were played in all for a champion to be crowned when there were 68 teams at the start?
a) 32 b) 34 c) 45 d) 67 e) 68 f) over 70
3. There are five people who meet for dinner at a restaurant. If everybody shakes hands with each other once, how many handshakes will take place in all? (This isn’t a trick question.)
a) 4 b) 5 c) 9 d) 10 e) over 12
4. What’s the greatest amount of change you can have and STILL NOT BE ABLE TO GIVE EXACT CHANGE FOR A DOLLAR? (You can figure this out if you get out some coins and experiment. I’ll give you a hint: If you have three quarters and three dimes, you can’t give exact change for a dollar, can you? But you have $1.05. Well, the real answer is higher than that.)
a) $1.13 b) $1.19 c) $1.23 d) $1.27 e) over $1.27
5) Fill in the next number in this sequence: 0, 1, 4, 11, 26, _____
a) 37 b) 49 c) 57 d) 81 e) more than 81
Confession: I missed two of these the first time I tried them — #2 and #5. But as soon as the teacher explained #2, that kind of question is now the easiest Math problem in the world. Really! #5 was super tricky though.
So now that you’ve done these, CLICK HERE to go to the answers. I’ve added some explanation to show how you get them.
And hey, if you think any of these answers are wrong, write and explain how I messed up. I’ll fix them right away and give you credit.
Talk to you soon.
From your Dude with the ‘Tude (and a super-tired brain from doing these problems),
Dr. Crankenfuss