A few weeks ago a farmer died. And the will he left behind... fortunately his three sons had had a good education.
His will was as follows:
- The first son would get 1/2 of the cows,
- The second son would get 1/3 of the cows and
- The third son would get 1/9 of the cows.
At first, everything seems fine. But unfortunately, the farmer had 17 cows. And pieces of cows weren't any good to the sons.
But, since the sons had a good education, they came up with a solution.
They lent a cow from the neighbour.
Why? Then they had 18:
- 18 * 1/2 = 9 for the 1st son,
- 18 * 1/3 = 6 for the second son and
- 18 * 1/9 = 2 for the third son.
'But what about the neighbour,' you may say. Well, since 9 + 6 + 2 is 17, the cow that was left over went back to the neighbour.
What do you think about the sons' education?
Since 17 as a basis cannnot be distrubuted in these proportions - the adding a non-distributed 18th one to the basis results in an even allocation of the 17 cows - but "gives an added proportion to each of the sons with this new basis.
1st son gets "1/2 or .500" additional cow.
2nd one gets an additional "1/3 or .333" cow.
3rd gets an additional "1/9 or .111" cow.
The comprise the effective allocation of the "odd" cow, in same proportion of father's original intent.
Solution
