Ken's blog

At Danny’s Beach Bar run by Danny McDoogle at a popular Andalusian beach, there were five waiters who would take turns washing glasses used by customers.

One day there were five broken glasses, four of them caused by one of the waiters named Pedro.

Danny McDoogle was furious, figuring that this was certainly beyond the realms of chance and due to sabotage. So, he decided to fire Pedro for damaging his property.

The other waiters stood up for Pedro claiming that this could happen to anyone.

Based on probability, would this event be a valid reason to fire Pete for being careless, or could it have been an accidental occurrence as the waiters claimed?

“Daddy, give me an interesting problem to think about. I’m bored with these homework problems, they’re all too easy,” said Junior laying down his pen on his notebook in disgust.

“I’ll give you one Euler offered to his pupils,” said daddy.

“Tell me, tell me,” said Junior enthusiastically.

“Divide 100 into two summands so that one is divisible by 7 and the other by 11,” said daddy.

Junior got busy with his pen on the notebook…

“I liked that one, daddy,” said Junior, “tomorrow I’ll give it to my teacher in class to see if she knows the answer. I’m sure she’ll be very happy,” laughed Junior, clapping his hands.

What do you say are the two summands?

One sunny afternoon, Mrs. Cuddleworthy was sitting in the shade of a tree on a small hill in the Rolling Hills Village Park observing children play below her. She had a basket of fruits which contained four apples, three oranges, two pears and a plum.

Mrs. Cuddleworthy was in doubt about how to distribute these fruits to two imp-faced youngsters – a boy and a girl – who had climbed up to her with eager eyes attracted by the fruit basket decorated with a red cloth.

I wonder in how many ways could I distribute the fruits to these two little urchins? …

After some moments of confused thought, Mrs. Cuddleworthy decided to hand out the fruits in a random manner. Later she would ask her son Leonard to work out the answer to her puzzle.

What would you say are the number of ways Mrs. Cuddleworthy could hand out the fruits, ensuring that none of the children would receive nothing?

Mr. Jones and Mr. Barnsworth went to purchase some bottles of wine for their employer, Acme Wine Depot.

They went to Dufour Wineries Inc., as they had heard boasts of a fine selection of French wines there.

Mr. Jones and Mr. Barnsworth decided to select only two wine types, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from the Bordeaux region in France.

They bought 90 bottles in total of these two types of wine.

While purchasing the wine at the Dufour Wineries Inc., Mr. Dufour invited them to sample several other wines for “future reference.”

After a bountiful sampling session with French cheese, all served by a jolie serveuse, Mr. Jones and Mr. Barnsworth managed to return home by taxi, but lost the invoice on the way.

Next day, fearful of reproach and penalties from the accountant at the Acme Wine Depot, they tried to reconstruct the purchase from a fuzzy memory.

Mr. Jones managed to remember that he had bought half as many Merlot and a third as many Cabernet Sauvignon as Mr. Barnsworth, for a total sum of 360 dollars. He also remembered that three bottles of Merlot cost as much as two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Before going to work that day, they proceeded with the painful process of working out how much Mr. Barnsworth had bought, and the full cost of their purchase.

Can you help them work out these figures?