I lost my credit card in the parking lot today. Some very nice lady found it and called the credit card company. I don’t know who she is, but thank you very much. There are still good people in the world. Now back to the Piranha Club.
Just a note to Torbjörn and Divad. You two guys are too smart for me. But I don’t believe Torbjörn. There must have been a flaw in your program. Maybe in your random number generator. And Divad mentioned Marilyn Vos Savant. If you don’t recognize the name, she was supposedly the worlds smartest genius. I had correspondence with her years ago because I mentioned her in the strip. So I started following her advice column. One day a guy wrote in about a social problem that he was having. And she answered it as such. She didn’t recognize the statement of his problem was an example of Russell’s Paradox.
If you’re still wondering about the birthday question, here is the answer:
https://www.bing.com/search?form=MOZLBR&pc=MOZI&
q=How+many+people+in+a+room+have+same+birthday
I just got back from one of my entertaining gigs. This one went well. It was in a memory care facility. That’s good. Nobody will remember.
I hope you had a nice picnic. Meanwhile Arnold has discovered his true identity…
Gary posed a math question in comments.
Since we are currently discussing interesting shortcuts to solve problems, here is one for you math enthusiasts:
How can one easily compute the sum of all of the numbers from X to Y in literally seconds (versus adding them all up sequentially)? For instance, what is the sum of all the numbers between 1 and 10. Or between 1 and 20? It takes no longer than a few seconds to find the answer.
Here’s another problem : I play the Queen of Hearts at the Elks Lodge. If they pick your ticket which has a number from 1 to 52 on the first drawing, and the number on your ticket corresponds to the number associated with the Queen of Hearts you win the jackpot. Tickets cost $2.00. Of course at the first drawing there are 52 cards in the deck , so someone’s chance of winning is 1/52. The next drawing assuming someone didn’t win at the first drawing is 1/51, etc. I want to know before the first drawing, how many cards must be drawn before the odds are 50/50. The answer is n where ∑1/52 + 1/51 +…1/n = 1/2. Of course the odds before any particular drawing is 1/n where n is the number of cards left in the deck. The Elks cap the jackpot at $15,000 because the money (so they tell me) goes to any of their several charities. Three months ago they drew my ticket and my card was the JACK OF HEARTS! Geeze! The Piranha Club should do the Queen of Hearts.
On the island, Anna Maria Island where I grew up, at the Moose Lodge the jackpot is over $250,000! That’s because it’s the biggest membership in all the Mooses in the country. And it’s the biggest because it’s smack on the beach. When I was a very young man what is now the Moose Lodge was an Elks Lodge. I spent the best New Years Eve in my life there once.
I’ll be at the Elks this Wednesday. There are 4 cards left.
