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?

7 CANNOT BE THE CORRECT ANSWER, because it is so obvious that it would be unworthy of the flooble/perplexus website. The correct answer is 2.75 eggs.

The saleman started out with 2 eggs.
1st customer bought 1 + 0.5 eggs. To fill this order, the salesman broke one of the eggs. ("But the problem stated he didn't break an egg all day !!" That's not a problem. He wasn't selling these eggs during the day. These transactions occurred at night.)
Now there were 0.5 eggs left.
The 2nd customer bought 0.5*(0.5) + 0.5 = 0.25 + 0.5 = 0.75 eggs. Since the salesman only had an inventory of 0.5 egg at this point, he sold the customer his 0.5 egg and placed a future order of 0.25 egg.
Now the salesman had a zero inventory and one future order for 0.25 egg.
The 3rd customer ordered 0.5*(0) + 0.5 = 0.5 egg.
The salesman now placed another future order for 0.5 egg.
His future orders now total 0.25 + 0.5 = 0.75 egg.

So all the conditions of the problem are met. He sold all two eggs (along with placing two future orders totalling 0.75 egg) and he "didn't break an egg all day" since the selling occurred at night.



Edited on November 11, 2003, 1:19 pm

Posted by Dan on 2003-11-11 13:14:46