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Expert: - 2/9/2009


Question
Hi Scott,
Am in need of a good brain as mine is quite defficient regarding anything mathmatic.
This is the question:
A boy asks his maths teacher her age. she coyly reponds: 'Today's date is my age, but within a week there will be another day that is one fifth of the new age I shall then be'. What is her sign of the Zodiac?

Many thanks for you time and effort.

Bill

Answer
I don't know anything about her zodiac, but can say she is 29 and it is the 29th just before her birthday.  Within a week she will have her birthday and be 30, so the 6th is one fifth of her new age.

If she meant that in one week she would have a birthday and the date would be on fifth of her age, the new date would need to be near the end of a month and the new date would be the 3rd, 4th, or 5th, or 6th.  If it was the 1st, she would only be 5.  If it was the 2nd, she would only be 10.  If it was the 3rd, she would only be 15.
If it was the 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th, she would be 20, 25, 30, or 35.

On the current date, she is one year younger, so that would be
19, 24, 29, or 34.  That rules out the last age (since there is never a 34th in any month).  We can also rule out 19 since the 19th is over a week from the end of any month.  Now we can also eliminate 24, for that would put her at best on March 3rd in 7 days, and she is older than 15.  We can conclude that she is 29.

That would mean her birthday was on the 29th of a 30 day month, so that in 7 days it would be 6th of the next month.  This would make her 29 on the 29th and after her birthday in the next week, she would be 30 on the 6th.  This would mean her birthday was in April, June, September, or November.

I don't see how we can break it down any farther than in one of these four months.  Maybe there is something to add about the season of the year, for the months I said were in spring, summer, fall and winter.

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Scott A Wilson

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I can answer any question in general math, arithetic, discret math, algebra, box problems, geometry, filling a tank with water, trigonometry, pre-calculus, linear algebra, complex mathematics, probability, statistics, and most of anything else that relates to math. I can even tell you it takes me over 2,000 steps to go a mile, but is that relevant?

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Experience in the area; I have tutored people in the above areas of mathematics for almost two years in AllExperts.com. I have tutored people here and there in mathematics since before I received a BS degree almost 25 years ago. In just two more years, I received an MS degree as well, but more on that later. I tutored at OSU in the math center for all six years I was there. Most students offering assistance were juniors, seniors, or graduate students. I was allowed to tutor as a freshman. I tutored at Mathnasium for well over a year. I worked at The Boeing Company for over 5 years. I received an MS degreee in Mathematics from Oregon State Univeristy. The classes I took were over 100 hours of upper division credits in mathematical courses such as calculus, statistics, probabilty, linear algrebra, powers, linear regression, matrices, and more. I graduated with honors in both my BS and MS degrees. Past/Present Clients: College Students at Oregon State University, various math people since college, over 7,500 people on the PC from the US and rest the world.

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My master's paper was published in the OSU journal. The subject of it was Numerical Analysis used in shock waves and rarefaction fans. It dealt with discontinuities that arose over time. They were solved using the Leap Frog method. That method was used and improvements of it were shown. The improvements were by Enquist-Osher, Godunov, and Lax-Wendroff.

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Master of Science at OSU with high honors in mathematics. Bachelor of Science at OSU with high honors in mathematical sciences. This degree involved mathematics, statistics, and computer science. I also took sophmore level physics and chemistry while I was attending college. On the side I took raquetball, but that's still not relevant.

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I earned high honors in both my BS degree and MS degree from Oregon State. I was in near the top in most of my classes. In several classes in mathematics, I was first. In a class of over 100 students, I was always one of the first ones to complete the test. I graduated with well over 50 credits in upper division mathematics.

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My clients have been students at OSU, people nearby, friends with math questions, and several people every day on the PC, and you're probably make one more.

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