From: utzoo!laura Newsgroups: net.math Title: Re: Stamp Problem Article-I.D.: utzoo.2311 Posted: Tue Jul 27 15:15:36 1982 Received: Tue Jul 27 15:15:36 1982 References: ucf-cs.708 when i was a kid one of the neat things i discovered was that it was particularily fun to freak out grown-ups. I spent a lot of time devising new ways to get them to think I was twice as smart as I thought i was, (or twice as gross, or twice as noisy, or...) one of the successes was a deck of six cards, which the stamp problem reminded me of. The first card had the number '1' in the upper left hand corner. the second card had the number '2', the third the number '4' the fourth '8', fifth '16' and sixth '32'. Then you filled in the rest of the cards in such a fashion that the sum of the upper left corners of the cards which contained any given number always added to that number. For example, no other cards would have the number '16' on them, while only cards one and two would have the number '3' and all 6 cards would have the number 63. They made a pretty pattern, too...and it was amazing the number of unsuspecting grownups who were sure i had marked the cards, or had palmed them in such a way to fix their choice of number...for absolutely certain some of them never caught on! It was fun to be the 'wonder kid' at least until I had exhausted my supply of unsuspecting grown-ups... are there other neat mathematical discoveries out there which you made as kids? (I know, this is *not* net.math.reminisce, but something tells me i would have done a better job at learning my times tables if I had come up with this sort of scheme to bamboozle people with) laura creighton decvax!utzoo!laura p.s. Anybody bisect the parellel lines yet? I *cant* and its *driving me crazy*.