Monday, June 7, 2010

Ockham Principle

Some time ago, a college of mine sent me this by mail:















The subject was "Can you solve it?"

I don't have to tell you that I couldn't think about anything else until I solved the problem!

Take some time and try to solve it yourself........

The solution is:














(take the first number of the Triangle and multiple by 5 à you get (1), take the second number of the triangle and multiply by 3 you get (2) and take the last number of the triangle and multiple by 4 you get (2) )

Well this was not the solution I found, I found this instead:


















(Decompose the number in prime numbers, the box (1) are tens (2) are hundreds and (3) the units of the triangle, the hundreds are the only one that are ordered from lo to high; in order to calculata the tens, multiply all the prime numbers but the first one; in order to calculate the hundred multiply all the primes bu the last one; in order to calculate the units multiply all the prime numbers but the last two)

Which is not the easiest solution (of course!!). Is my solution wrong?, well, no. I have an explanation of the my result. This is just another example of the Ockham Theorem J


Cheers!

If you have another solution, do a comment!

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