There are a total of 100 animals: cows, sheep and buffaloes. These 100 animals ate 100 bunches of grass.

Every cow ate 5 bunches, every buffalo ate 3 bunches and every sheep ate only 1/3 bunch.

How many cow, sheep and buffalo are there? You only know that there is at least one of every kind of animal.

There is no unique solution.

Let c = cows, b = buffaloes, and s = sheep.
From condition 1 (100 animals): c + b + s = 100
From condition 2 (100 bunches): 5c + 3b + 1/3s = 100
So we can state: c + b + s = 5c + 3b + 1/3s
This can reduce to: s = 6c + 3b
Adding the constraints: 1) at least one of each animal, and 2)no partial animals (you can't have half a cow), leaves the following solutions (c, b, s): (4, 18, 78); (8, 11, 81); and (12, 4, 84).

Posted by Ender on 2002-06-10 09:45:54