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*.