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Tough Sequence Problem (Posted on 2024-01-13)

A student about to graduate High School just finds out that his Math teacher gave him a failing grade. He does not want to go to summer school, and thinks he deserves a passing grade. His teacher gives him one last chance to earn the passing grade. He gives him some words, fractions, definitions, a question, a group of whole numbers, and two phrases. They are:

Square, Ellipse, Four-sided Polygon, One-sided, Ellipse, How many people inhabit the Moon?(Zero is not acceptable), Trapezoid, Isosceles, 1/26, 12/26

And the group: 5.8, 1, 3, 4, 2.5

He also says: "What A is to the Alphabet becomes greater."

The teacher tells the student that the things he has given him, when understood properly, will lead him to do something with the number group. The student is allowed 1 minute to figure out what to do with this group. What is it? Does he eliminate the decimals? Does he eliminate the whole numbers? Or perhaps he has to isolate the numbers that are related in some other way?

Well, this student REALLY doesn't want to spend his summer making up math class. He is able to solve the problem with 5 seconds left on the clock.

What did the student do with the number group based on the information provided by his teacher to get that passing grade?

Submitted by K Sengupta

Rating: 5.0000 (1 votes)

Solution: (Hide)

The student placed the number group in order from least to greatest. Why did he do that? Well looking at all of the clues the teacher gave him he knew they should be in SEQUENTIAL order from Least to Greatest. He noticed the words, when spelled out had a strange commonality, the words defined fit this commonality, and the fractions were associated as well. The quote from the teacher gave him the edge.
S(quare)= SE(llipse)= E Four-sided polygon is Q(uadralateral)= Q One-sided is U(nilateral)= U (Not referring to any shape, just the concept) E(llipse)= E
How many people inhabit the Moon (if Zero is not acceptable) = N(one) = N
T(rapezoid)= T
I(soceles)= I
1/26 (1st of 26 letters in the English Alphabet) = A
12/26 (12th of 26 letters in the English Alphabet) = L
'What A is to the Alphabet becomes greater' meant A is FIRST (Look for FIRST LETTERS), and also the First NUMBER should BECOME GREATER with the next, and the next.

Comments: ( You must be logged in to post comments.)

	Subject	Author	Date
	a few thoughts, not definitive ...	Larry	2024-01-14 11:20:50

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