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Gold (Posted on 2005-10-11) Difficulty: 2 of 5
Long ago, there was a king who had six sons. The king possessed a huge amount of gold, which he hid carefully in a building consisting of a number of rooms. In each room there were a number of chests; this number of chests was equal to the number of rooms in the building. Each chest contained a number of golden coins that equaled the number of chests per room. When the king died, one chest was given to the royal barber. The remainder of the coins had to be divided fairly between his six sons.

Now: Is a fair division possible in all situations?

See The Solution Submitted by Hugo    
Rating: 3.1667 (6 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
re: why not? | Comment 2 of 9 |
(In reply to why not? by Rex)

Because,

There are n rooms with n chests and n coins per chest
this is n ^3.
But the number of coins total is the # of chests times the number of coins per chest

n^2 * n^2 = n^5

So the expression is (n^5-n^3)/6...

I think this is always good, but I'm not sure

  Posted by Carl on 2005-10-11 17:43:56

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