An egg salesman was asked how many eggs he had sold that day.
He replied, "My first customer said, 'I'll buy half your eggs and half an egg more'. My second and third customers said the same thing.
When I had filled all three orders, I sold out of eggs without having to break a single egg the whole day."

How many eggs were sold in all?

(In reply to That was the answer; this is the solution by Charlie)

Well, the fact that no eggs were broken in the process tells us that we have to begin with an odd number[half of an odd number is a number short of .5 to become a natural number, which in turn is the required condition -- no breakage of eggs].
Since our salesman was left with no eggs at the end of his transaction, our working equation becomes (.5)*(x)-(.5) == 0
which yields the soln. for x as 1, where x represents the remainder from the previous transaction.
Thus the general equation is (.5)*(x) - (.5) == y
where x --> no. of eggs the salesman had before the transaction; and
y--> no.of eggs the salesman has after the transaction.
starting off with y = 0; and noting that x of a given transaction equals the y for the previous transaction, we arrive at the right answer.

Posted by Vinod on 2003-11-11 10:54:54