So anyway I put my name on a list last year saying I could help out with math. Someone has finally sent me an email asking for help. The Thins is, they just asked a question I don't know how to do. I know algebra and calculus fairly well, but not this:
If you have 30 buses, 12 with blue, 8 with red, and 5 with both, how many have no color?I figure that some of you have had awesome foreign math classes in preschool, while my pathetic American math sucked. If you come up with an answer, tell me, and how you did it, so I can help this person with their remedial math.
Black is all colors when talking about pigment, but no color when talking about light. Just like you can't get a rainbow with black, you can't make white by mixing all your paints.
I say, none. Colors must exsist. Absence of color my ass! The color itself IS the color!! i.e. Black; black is a color, else it would not be possible to make as a paint!!!
yeah i was referring to pigments, why would I talk about light when we're talking about busses??
Sounds like a trick question if you want to dig into it. 12 with blue, 8 with red and 5 with both. So it could mean they are not ALL blue or red posibly. It could mean you have 5 red and blue buses, They don't say "are" blue…they say "with" blue…etc… So it could be… 5 red AND blue buses, 7 all blue buses, 3 all red buses, and 10 buses that are invisible like Wonder Woman's invisible jet as they could not have any color at all. I am sure it is not the answer they are looking for, but throw it in thier face for the wording…. they may think your I.Q. is over 200 or something ;)
By the way, I had a buddy at a privious job where we tossed around hypothetical questions that would stump people sorta or make them think differently. One we came up with… "If a duck flys backwards at the speed of sound and it "quacks", does the "quack" hang in mid air motionless? (Actually our boss had an interesting answer… the duck should make a sonic boom if it was moving that fast.) If another duck flying at the speed of sound was flying forwards on the same path, would it hear the "quack" backwards? (Yeah, I know…it would be a pile of feathers as they collide). He had all sorts of twisted questions… "Where do the Thunder Cats go to the bathroom?… do they have a giant litter box or something?" "If an alien (from the movies) takes on some charateristics of of it's host, what do you get if it's host is a T-Rex?" Thinking outside of the box can be fun. =)