Five students each answered five questions on an quiz consisting of two multiple-choice questions (A, B or C) and three True-False questions. They answered the questions as follows:

Student Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 
Alex    A  A  T  T  T 
Bert    B  B  T  F  T 
Carl    A  B  T  T  F 
Dave    B  C  T  T  F 
Eddy    C  A  F  T  T 

No two students got the same number of correct answers. Who got the most correct answers?

(In reply to Solution - could be considered Brute Force by nikki)

Come to think of it, I didn’t really check every case, like I said I did. Checking every case, in my opinion, would be like saying "Alex got 5, Bert got 4, Carl got 3, Dave got 2, Eddy got 1… no that didn’t work. Ok, Alex got 5, Bert got 4, Carl got 3, Dave got 2, Eddy got 0… that didn’t work…" and so on. Or even "Let’s guess what the answers to the quiz are. Could be AATTT, AATTF, AATFT, AATFF…" and seeing how peoples scores ended up.

I only checked 10 cases (4 of which I barely got into before showing the contradiction), so I don’t think my solution counted as brute force.

I know noone had questioned it yet, but since I know that brute force solutions had be a topic of conversation lately, I wanted to question myself J

Posted by nikki on 2004-09-02 11:38:11