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Surely the answer to the boy girl ratio riddle is:

3 Boys and 4 Girls

The one boy has 2 brothers becaus ehe is one of the 3 boysgiving him 4 sisters which is double the amount of brothers he has and the girl has just as many sisters as brothers - 3 sisters and 3 brothers.

Kroots wrote:Surely the answer to the boy girl ratio riddle is:

3 Boys and 4 Girls

The one boy has 2 brothers becaus ehe is one of the 3 boysgiving him 4 sisters which is double the amount of brothers he has and the girl has just as many sisters as brothers - 3 sisters and 3 brothers.

But if the boy is an only child then he does indeed have twice as many sisters as he has brothers, and his non-existant sister has no brothers and no sisters. take that maths!
ooo, shall I start proving that 2=1 and that everyone in the country is in fact a woman? there are a few "proofs" of these things around.

Surely if the boy is an only child his has no other sisters and no other brothers giving him the same amount of (nonexistant) brothers as sisters.

Bigtone53 wrote:The key point is that as the moon orbits the earth once in 28 days, the same side of the moon always faces us. For this to happen, the moon must spin on its axis once in the same 28 days, so the length of its 'day' (sunrise to sunrise) is 28 earth days.

That's close enough for cash! There's some eccentricity in the orbits of the Earth and Moon, but the average is about 28 days.

No I'm with you on that. I'm thinking of the day rather than a day. I'll put my thickie cap on.

Bigtone53 wrote:The alternative answer is that as a 'day' is defined as the time it takes to rotate on its axis once, the length of a moon day is 1 moon day

I was thinking of this one too.

Kroots wrote:Surely if the boy is an only child his has no other sisters and no other brothers giving him the same amount of (nonexistant) brothers as sisters.

and also twice as many sisters as brothers! times things by zero, it works!

Lawrence wrote:ooo, shall I start proving that 2=1 and that everyone in the country is in fact a woman? there are a few "proofs" of these things around.

You sound like someone with a maths background, at least in part. Are you?

Maths can also 'prove' that women are evil, and while that one is a little flawed, it is at least, really quite funny.

MagicBell wrote:

Lawrence wrote:ooo, shall I start proving that 2=1 and that everyone in the country is in fact a woman? there are a few "proofs" of these things around.

You sound like someone with a maths background, at least in part. Are you?

Maths can also 'prove' that women are evil, and while that one is a little flawed, it is at least, really quite funny.

I do indeed have a maths degree.
I havn't seen the "women are evil one" does it run along the same lines as the "money is the route of all evil" 'proof'?

Lawrence wrote:I do indeed have a maths degree.
I havn't seen the "women are evil one" does it run along the same lines as the "money is the route of all evil" 'proof'?

Ah nice, that makes two of us.

Its based on money being the route of all evil, as well as a couple of other well known facts/phrases.

http://www.anvari.org/fun/Gender/Women_are_Evil.html

That's basically it. It could perhaps be displayed better, but that was the first link i found.

MagicBell wrote:

Lawrence wrote:I do indeed have a maths degree.
I havn't seen the "women are evil one" does it run along the same lines as the "money is the route of all evil" 'proof'?

Ah nice, that makes two of us.

Its based on money being the route of all evil, as well as a couple of other well known facts/phrases.

http://www.anvari.org/fun/Gender/Women_are_Evil.html

That's basically it. It could perhaps be displayed better, but that was the first link i found.

Thoughts that's where it was going. yeah, could be displayed better, i do find it rather using to see it scrawled down.

ok, ok ok, here's one (i'll steer clear of induction for now):

x=y
x-y=0
2(x-y)=0
-> (x-y)=2(x-y)
[divide both sides by (x-y)]-> 1=2

now to me it's a load of tosh, but you can fool the stupid with it.
my maths head wants to stop at the first line and say "well there's your first problem"

Yeah those shifty maths proofs always involve a zero to add bits that should never be there.

What really fuddled my brain was the 'bigger infinity'. The proof that there are more values between, say, 1 and 2, than there are integers (whole numbers).

I don't know it cause it's quite long and complicated but i think its a genuine one and its crazy.
But lets not drag all these magicians into a world of numerics (or expose my lack of knowledge despite my maths education!).


Can show us your other proof though? That everyone in the country is a woman?

MagicBell wrote:The proof that there are more values between, say, 1 and 2, than there are integers (whole numbers).

MB, This is one is quite easy. For any positive integer that you care to think of, there is an equivalent item in the 0-1 range, namely its reciprocal (n -> 1/n). So there are at least as many items on the range 0-1 as there are positive integers.

Where it starts getting spooky is that the same logic applies to any positive numbers, whether integers or not. On this one-to-one basis, it is correct that there are as many 'numbers' between 0 and 1 as there are between 0 and as high as you want to go, because for any one you pick in either set, you can find the other in the other set as its reciprocal.

Super spookiness comes when you find out that this infinity number (usually known as aleph null) is not the end of the game. There are other sets of countable things which cannot be counted using this 'basic' infinity.

As you say, we have moved far from a Magic forum.

get a room you maths-nerds!

Point taken, but the folder is Miscellaneous. After all, if it wasn't for maths-nerds, many of the more beautiful effects of the faro shuffle for instance may not have come to light