Math stumper? It’s easier than it looks at first glance

Still, on a test given to the world’s brightest math students from 16 countries 20 years ago, only 10% got it right. The percentage of Americans taking the test who got it right? Only 4%.

Hint:

If your solution involves numbers that are not integers, you’re doing it wrong.

Answer:

20 cm. Flatten the surface of the rod into a rectangle measuring 4 x 12 cm. With the string being wound four times around the rod, it covers 3 cm of the rod’s length on each turn. Recalling the Pythagorean theorem from your high-school geometry class, \(\sqrt{3^2+4^2}=\sqrt{9+16}=\sqrt{25}=5\). Multiply that by 4 and you get 20 cm.

This entry was posted in education, random on 11 Jun 2015 by Scott Alfter.

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Donald Trump - rally in Cullman, AL, 21 August 2021

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In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

unknown, but often attributed to George Orwell

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Richard Feynman

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Abraham Lincoln - first inaugural address, 1861

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

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Sarah Palin - speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die: but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

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Chinese proverb

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C. S. Lewis

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Thomas Sowell

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Winston Churchill

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Winston Churchill

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Winston Churchill

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Winston Churchill

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Winston Churchill

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unknown

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George Washington

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George Washington

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George Washington

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Voltaire

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Theodore Roosevelt

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Theodore Roosevelt

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Theodore Roosevelt

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Ronald Reagan

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James Madison

One can make this generalization about men: they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit; while you treat them well, they are yours. They would shed their blood for you, risk their property, their lives, their children, so long, as I said above, as danger is remote; but when you are in danger they turn against you.

Niccolo Machiavelli

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln

By government giveaway programs, individuals are often hurt far more than they are helped. The recipients of these programs become dependent on the government and their dignity is destroyed. Is it compassionate to enslave more and more people by making them a part of the government dependency cycle? I think compassion should be measured by how many people no longer need it. Helping people to become self-sufficient is much more compassionate than drugging them with the narcotic of welfare.

Rush Limbaugh

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

Milton Friedman

When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union—like public housing in the United States—look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.

Milton Friedman

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem, and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

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Dwight Eisenhower

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Calvin Coolidge

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

Edmund Burke

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Margaret Thatcher

There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.

Thomas Sowell

Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process.

Ronald Reagan

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

George Orwell

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital...if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal tomorrow what it has enacted today.

William Henry Harrison

The American republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Winston Churchill

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

Margaret Thatcher

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken - A Little Book in C Major

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Math stumper? It’s easier than it looks at first glance