Can you figure it out? I sure as hell can't.
I'm starting to think that the solution must depend on some 1960s cultural factoid ;P
Update 2005/05/25 5:50 pm: BoingBoing has posted the answer.
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23 comments:
The current theory, proposed by Hai, is that the ages are 9, 5, and 5. Hai got there in a vague way based on how they refused to describe the person who came to the door; I then noticed that the census taker had to look up to see the house number, implying that the person who came to the door is very short. (It's possible that the person who came to the door was in a wheelchair, but then the other two people wouldn't be old enough to help that person get down the stairs...)
oh BAH! vague my ASS! i did some technical math work involving factors and possible solutions, not "i think it's, oh i dunno, 9 and 5 and 5." vague... pfah!
if you REALLY want to know (easily bored people must skip past all this) how i got there, it was when you said 75, 3 and 3. i realized two things. first that they neglected to describe the person at the door, therefore they could be man or woman (and this was a total red herring), and that the census taker said "are you the oldest?"
that lead me to think "why did he ask 'are you the oldest?'" was it perhaps because something about the age was odd? you mentioned that shade had a guess, but you didn't think that the idea that all kids were probable, since an adult would have to own the house. that's when i realized why they didn't describe the person at the door, and why he had to ask if the person was the oldest.
i took the same numbers you gave me earlier (25, 3, and 3) and used 3 and 3 to get 9. then i divided 25. the only possible choices are 1 and 25, or 5 and 5. obviously, the first choice would make it so that the 9 year old was NOT the oldest, therefore, the ages had to be 9, 5 and 5.
NOT VAGUE. thppppppppppppppt. =P
My friend returns with 45, 5, and 1. By my logic, if the person at the door answers that they are the oldest (at 45), that leaves 5 to divide between the other two kids. The ONLY possible answer would be 5 and 1, therefore the census taker would have to be satisfied with that answer.
In this case, it makes more logical sense, since there's an adult to own the house, but I still argue that there would be no reason for the census taker to ask "are you the oldest?" to the person at the door. It would be assumed that they were the oldest, since the other factors of 225 would not be greater than 45.
Still, I think it's a good answer.
My other friend makes a good point: the census can only be taken by someone over 18.
Was that true in 1960?
The answer is 25, 3, and 3.
If you're very nice, I'll tell you how I know that to be true. :?
Definitely agree on the 3, 3, and 25. Here's a hint: The census taker didn't have sufficient information to answer without asking another question. (The answer really isn't based on word play.)
I don't have sufficient information to answer, either ;P The house number would be nice.
argh. i hate you all. >_<
i'm not very nice, but could you tell me anyway? i don't see how your answer makes sense. assuming that the person who comes to the door is 25 years old, the product of the other two housemates have to multiply to 9.
we know that the sum of ages equals a house number, so it has to be whole numbers. therefore, the two housemates can only be 1 and 9 or 3 and 3. in either case, there is absolutely no reason for the census taker to ask if the person at the door is the oldest. there can be no other answer.
secondly, if the person at the door is 25, how can the census taker positively know that the other housemates are 3 and 3? what if they're 1 and 9?
Well... It's kind of a trick question. See, there are essentially three questions being asked here and only one is really important.
The obvious questions are:
"How old are the occupants?"
and
"What is the house number?"
THe less than obvous, but only important question... The trick...is:
"How did the census taker arrive at a single answer that he knew to be right?"
If you answer that last question, the rest is just brute force math.
THe Census taker arrived at the answer because he had a bit of info you don't have, and because he asked a question with a binary solution set. "Are you the eldest?" It's a yes or no question. That the answer was yes was engouh for the man to eliminate all other options.
So, basically, the trick is not to know the house number, or to think that the key for the census taker was that the "person" was the oldest of the three. The key was that the census taker learned that there WAS an eldest and that fact elinated all doubt. Then find a solution that has has two answers, one with a single yougest and elder twins. Then you know that answer has to be the one lacking elder twins.
The only answser that fits all the facts is 15+15+1 = 25+3+3 = 31. Since 15, 15, and 1 has elder twins and thus no single "The eldest", the answer must be 25, 3, and 3.
That involves a cultural assumption, though ;P How do you know the person at the door wasn't the first twin out of the womb?
...or, for that matter, that there aren't two fifteen year olds who are adoptive siblings, or housemates?
My husband and I were born in the same year, but he was born in September. If someone asked me if I was the eldest in my household, I'd say yes.
You don't :) THen again, you don't know why the census taker couldn't tell the "person" wasn't 15.
The wording of the question is misleading (probably intentionally).
Mathmatically it works, which is all that matters. Somewhat like the educational word problem "You have 10 apples and I take 2, how many are left?" begs the question, "Why am I stealing your apples?"
Bah, that's not similar at all ;P
This thing is flawed. Flawed!
If we're simply talking about it working mathematically, what is flawed about my answer of 9, 5, 5?
9, 5, 5 doesn't work, because the census taker said there was one more thing he "needed" to know. This implies that he could not continue without this fact. This, in turn, implies that there was more than one set of ages that added up to the house number (a number which the census taker knew). Thus, it must mean that 31 was the house number, and the census taker wanted to differentiate between the 25,3,3 and 15,15,1 sets.
After that, you just have to assume that the person who answered the door, and who is posing the riddle to the census taker, wouldn't give an answer to the "are you the eldest" question that leaves the riddle unsolvable. If the person at the door is 15, and is technically a little bit older than the other 15 year old, he or she cannot answer "yes," as this will not give the census taker enough information. Thus, because the person said "yes," we must assume that the person is 25 years old and is CLEARLY older than the other people in the house.
It's rather shady, but this must be the case for the riddle to be answerable... so thus this is the only answer. If the answer is 15,3,3... there is no way for you to know that, and the riddle is simply unsolvable. Make sense?
If you're going to ask the question 'how does he know they aren't both 15 and ones the older', then you can also ask how does he not tell the diference between a 25 year old and a 15 year old. You can use that kind of logic if you're taking a common sense aproach, but from a mathematical standpoint 15=15, there is no oldest.
ach du lieber i am stupid. i was downplaying the house number as a red herring. my answer makes perfect sense if and only if you ignore the house number as a factor.
the two answer sets i came up with were 9, 5, 5 and 25, 9, 1. if the 9 year old at the door was was the oldest, it stood to reason that the 9, 5, 5 set was correct. if the 9 year old was NOT the oldest, then the oldest would be 25.
but i forgot to factor in the fact that the house numbers would immediately give away which set is correct, meaning the census taker wouldn't need to ask at all.
i'm crawling back into my hole now.
Yeah, the "looked up" was the red herring.
And I thought I was so clever...
Heheheh, check out the continued discourse here.
RE: reader comment about why the answer is BS
maybe it was an asian girl at the door answering his questions. that's why he didn't know if the girl was 25 or 10.
*blinks* Interesting. I didn't even try to work out that puzzle, because of several factors:
a) I was taught Math in Malay, and could not figure out what 'product' meant in mathematical terms;
b) I was too lazy/busy at work to look up the meaning of 'product';
c) I suck in Math...
So there you have it. Oh, and I still have no idea what 'product' means...
Dawn
The product is what you get when you multiply numbers together.
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