Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Wednesday Brain Teaser 12-12-12

Jack and Jill were racing, but it was no contest.  Jack beat Jill by 10 yards on a 100 yard course.  Jill suggested that for the second race, Jack should start 10 yards behind the starting line.  Presuming they run the same speed, who wins this race, and how long before Amanda Marcotte writes a column about it?

8 comments:

  1. Jack beats Jill by a yard, or about 0.1 - 0.2 second. they are, after all, tied with ten yards to go, and he's faster.

    Amanda Marcotte will write that column before the race takes place, after merely hearing about it.

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    Replies
    1. Congratulations! Right answer for the race.

      Unfortunately you missed half of the Marcotte answer. She will write one before the race, and another one after discussing how it was even worse than we all realized.

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  2. It's a tie. Amanda Marcotte writes a column about the race before it begins stating that Jack should have a handicap of 20 yards because he's not only a faster runner but also a male.

    Wait... add another 10 yards to Jack's handicap because he's running downhill (male privilege, ya know?) while Jill is running uphill. In heels. With a uterus.

    Or... IOW -- I dunno. I opened a bottle of wine tonight. What color is Jack's shirt?



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  3. I'm more interested to see the equation.

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    Replies
    1. The Equation of the Unified Field Theory of Fictional Characters running a Fictional Trackmeet with Handicaps.

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    2. Let's see....

      if we take x to be the track, y to be the handicap, z to be the fictional factor

      then we get

      Time = (x+y)^z

      BUT that doesn't take in to account any social commentary so we have to have a = bias factor for men b = bias factor for women c = generalized outrage

      we now have

      Feelings = Time - a + (b*c)

      There you go. Simple.

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