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Re:Are You Smarter Than a Quant? Questions from the MoMath M... by eru on Friday March 04, 2016 @11:16PM (#11228398)
> (2) and (3) really are easy though. Both can be solved by deriving counterexamples for the options until one is left.

Who says there's that exactly one of the answers is right? For (2) the formulation of the question even suggests that any number could be right or wrong.

Re:Are You Smarter Than a Quant? Questions from the MoMath M... by Arnavion on Saturday March 05, 2016 @02:58AM (#11228826)
Nobody, and I didn't assume it until I'd found counter-examples for four of the choices and couldn't find any for the fifth.

Edit: And yes, I know the inability to find counter-examples to something doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

Re:Are You Smarter Than a Quant? Questions from the MoMath M... by goldenkey on Saturday March 05, 2016 @08:02AM (#11229374)
I dont know about that. I found the answer through logic rather than exact example. If a teacher shook hands with an odd number, x, of other teachers. That means that we know there were at least x handshakes that werent his, by symmetry of handshakes. Now, we know that those x handshakes could be divided up into any such partitions between teachers. But whats really cool is that we know some basic properties of partitions of odd numbers. We know that an odd number always breaks into an odd number of odd partitions (carrying the oddness.. ie. The extra 1 mod 2, the bit) You may need a few examples to convince yourself. 9=3+3+3 7=2+5 and well any number 199=196+1+1+1

Now clearly if the main teacher having odd shakes x, implies that an odd number of other teachers have odd total shakes, then the total odd shakers is even.