by Matthew Cobb
Spotted on Tw*tter. I’ll give the source later, along with the explanation. Post your explanations below. If you know the answer already, please refrain from posting – if you work it out, go ahead!
[EDIT: The correct answer appears in the first comment below! If you want to spend some time working it out, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS! I will put in some extra returns to push the comment below the bottom of your screen… If you don’t care, hit the ‘comments’ button or scroll on down]
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A dozen a gross and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five time eleven
Is equal to nine squared, no more.
Did you guess that, or look it up?
I didn’t look it up.
I’m not going to argue with the first poster’s claim that they got it by themselves(although I’m a bit sceptical that you can guess the ‘dozen a gross and a score’ from a standing start) – but I’ll just mention that QI, the Beeb’s comedy panel show, featured this equation and its answer a few weeks ago(possibly in the ‘Maths’ episode – the programme is on its thirteenth series, and each series represents a letter of the alphabet. Therefore all the episodes this series are on themes beginning with M.). I’ve no idea if I’d have got it otherwise.
Stephen Fry liked it very much, as you’d expect. 🙂
“…although I’m a bit sceptical that you can guess the ‘dozen a gross and a score’ from a standing start…”
Oh, no, that was the easiest part! As soon as you know it’s a limerick you’re after, the first line just pops into your head with perfect limerick rhythm. Then the rest falls into place easily.
Well, harly 2pops into your head. But you can guess that you’re looking for circumlocutions, so “dozen””gross” and “score” are straight on the list (I was looking for paper!). “Three root four leaps out then.
“Seven” and “eleven” were now obviously another couplet.
But I couldn’t see how to put it together to scan.
Which is partly why I am a geologist, not a poet or lyricist.
No, I think it isn’t that hard. I believe the first poster could have come up with that once the rhyme begins (as Diane G says below). The score thing would have been wrong if I had tried to guess….but I’m mathematically challenged….the lyric came easier.
“The score thing would have been wrong if I had tried to guess….”
Only because you Canucks probably spent less time memorizing the Gettysburg Address than we Yanks.
Yeah we just think of a hockey goal.
LOL!
I love listening to a hockey game. Last year I happened to tune into one on the radio while driving…even when the game was paused, the announcers were still talking a mile-a-minute. So funny!
I remembered it from QI too!
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I would reckon the last line:
Is equal to nine to the second, no more
I read it as “is nine times itself and no more”.
I got it too. 🙂 Great fun! I’m just sorry I wasn’t first! 🙁
(My last line was going to be, “Equals nine squared and no more,” though. Close enough.)
I didn’t even try. Math saddens me.
Me too – I sent it to our mathematician son!
Guys, this is just arithmetic. Not even algebra! 😀
My issue with math has nothing to do with the Latin or Greek alphabet, which I like.
Ah, so you’re more into calculus, then.
Stop hurting my brain, it didn’t do anything to you.
@DianA
Love it! I’m stealing that!
cr
And it’s really not even arithmetic. You don’t have to actually do any math to solve this riddle. Just be familiar with nomenclature.
Indeed!
I saw the square root symbol and just thought, “Nope!”
Correct!
As an engineer I just looked at the equation, noted that it was correct, and then wondered what the point was. Which confirms that while engineers are good at math they are not generally good at poetry (hangs head in shame…)
[Geologist props engineer’s head up at a jaunty Australopithecine angle.]
Ask not what poetry can do for you, but how stuck poets would be without you to build their pens for them and ensure their are printing presses for their verbiage to pollute.
“Pens” obviously for keeping the pigs comfortable. The poets relish such “character-building” experiences.
I’m an engineer. Though apparently the consensus is that I cheated or guessed, since actually solving it honestly would be impossible. 😉
Didn’t you just look it up in the engineers’ book of algebraic limericks? 😁
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Ha ha! Oh that such a book existed! Also, The Statistician’s Book of Clever Puns but it wouldn’t be normal, indeed it could be seen as rather mean.
In all probability.
Distribution might be a problem.
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True, but there is always the option of deviation from standard routes.
Via what modes of transport?
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Only on this site could we get punny about stats!
Ones that are median in size.
As long as they stay on the right side of the median.
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Is this a poisson (distribution) d’avril?
🐟
A couple comments does not a census make. As an engineer, you should understand the statistics. 😉
I’m an engineer to (or was till I retired, now I’m just a beach bum*). And my reaction was entirely the same. See my comment at #9 below.
(*More importantly, here in upside-down-land it’s 80 in the shade again, or 97 on the grass in the sun. I shall have to go to the beach for the sixth day in a row. I don’t know how long I can keep this up. Auckland *never* has the same weather more than 24 hours in a row. Usually not more than 12. This is just ridiculous.)
cr
‘too’, not ‘to’.
A beach bum who can’t spel.
cr
Sub
While we are on the subject of mathematical poetry, here is a love poem written in the language of Tensor Algebra.
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Art/tensor.html
It was originally written in Polish, so the translator deserves twelve out of ten!
Lewis Carroll included a mathematical formula in one of his poetic riddles from “Phantasmagoria.” The x-squared bit won’t look quite right, but you’ll get the point:
“Yet what are all such gaieties to me
Whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?
x2 + 7x + 53
= 11 / 3”
Ouch!
That reduces to 3x^2 + 21x + 148 = 0
which won’t factorise.
Applying the quadratic-solving equation
x = -b +- SQRT(b^2 – 4ac) / 2a
gives
x = -21 +- SQRT( -1335) / 6
which is complex and imaginary.
Unless I’ve made a mistake with my arithmetic, which is quite possible.
cr
My wife just sneered that it wasn’t even algebra, but at least I made a limerick.
Twelve plus one forty four 156
Plus twenty times the square root of four 26
Divided by seven 182/7 = 26
Plus five times eleven 55
Equals eighty one even, not more. 81
Wow, that’s really good! (But you need to rework line 2.)
Oh dear.
here was mine:
a dozen, a gross, 20 more
plus 3 times the square root of 4
divide that by 7
add 5 x 11
the answer is one plus 4 score
I put the ‘score’ at the end and ‘more’ at the beginning 🙂
Ah, that is excellent!
And I guess it’s just fine to overlook the “plus zero” at the end of the equation, since that adds nothing… 😀
Umm, I checked it in my head, all it says is 81 = 81. Arithmetically correct but trivial.
I guess I just have no poetic soul.
🙁
cr
Ah, what is life, existence, the universe, but a tautology?
My attempt (having scrolled straight to the bottom of comments):
A dozen, a gross and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Equals nine squared and no more
Exactly my version, word for word. I’d think this solution would be quite common, and it’s intriguing how a limerick can be so perfectly encoded with just numerical operations.