Freddie the farmer has a paddock that he uses to graze his stock of cows. Each cow eats the same amount of grass each day, regardless of how many other cows are in the paddock and irrespective of the amount of grass left in the paddock. In an experiment, Freddie puts 6 cows into the paddock and he finds out it takes 3 days for them to eat all the grass. These 6 cows are then taken out of the paddock to allow the grass to grow back.

After the grass has been allowed to grow back to the original amount, Freddie then puts 3 cows into the paddock. This time he finds that it takes 7 days for the 3 cows to eat all the grass in the paddock. Freddie is puzzled that the cows took this long and consults a mathematician.

Freddie said "Geez mate, I dunno why me cows took that long to eat me paddock."
Marvin the mathematician replies "Well Freddie, tell me what assumptions you made."
Freddie replies "Well mate, maybe me cows got sick or somethin', cos I reckon that me 3 cows should have taken 6 days to eat me paddock, not 7 days! "
Marvin Replies, "I doubt that very much Freddie!"

After a while Marvin does some calculations and reveals that Freddie had overlooked an important assumption. What was the assumption Freddie had overlooked? Using Marvin's assumption, how long would a single cow take to eat the same paddock?

There's probably some joke in here about what a mathematician would say vs what a biologist would say.

Posted by Tristan on 2013-10-28 23:55:16