Sat Nov 21, 2009 6:50 am by tartle |
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i have a bag, with some balls in it. all but 4 are blue, all but 4 are green, and all but 4 are red. how many balls do i have in total? |
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Mon Nov 23, 2009 5:24 pm by rj82330 |
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Six |
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Sat Sep 25, 2010 4:39 pm by Legolas_Acer |
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5. right? |
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Thu Dec 23, 2010 5:45 am by Rag |
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12 |
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Fri Jun 17, 2011 9:42 am by einsteinager |
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6 balls.
This is basically an english language problem, there's not much logic in this.
Lets say there are x balls
So,
Number of blue balls = x-4
Number of green balls = x-4
Number of red balls = x-4
Total number of balls = 3x-12
But we took the original number of balls to be x.
Therefore,
3x-12=x
or, x=6 |
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Sun Jan 20, 2013 10:17 am by Quocamus |
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The problem does not say that there are only blue, green, and red balls. There may be balls of other colors. In that case, there could be 1 blue, 1 green, 1 red, and 2 of other colors (say black and white).
Using einsteinager's math, this would look like:
Let x = total number of balls
Number of blue balls = x-4
Number of green balls = x-4
Number of red balls = x-4
Number of other colored balls = y
x = 3(x - 4) + y
x = 3x - 12 + y
2x = 12 - y
The only restriction on y is that it cannot be greater than x.
Values of y that produce positive integer results for x, with x >= y are:
y = {0, 2, 4}
Thus, there could be 2 other colored balls, and a total of 5 balls.
You could even logically say that there could be 4 balls of other colors, and no blue/green/red balls.
If the problem were to state that the bag only has blue, green, and red balls, then y would be 0, and the answer would be 6. |
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Fri Oct 04, 2013 2:16 pm by alwinner |
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4 because all but 4 are blue, green and red at the same time. Impossible, so these balls can't exist. This leaves 4 unaffected by this, so only four can exist in the bag. |
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Wed Nov 20, 2013 6:12 am by camper4834 |
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The first guy got it right... six
2 blue, 2 green, 2 red
that means 2 blue and 4 that are NOT blue (red and green together)
therefore all but 4 are blue
same with other colors |
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Thu Dec 12, 2013 8:31 pm by Shavil Maharaj |
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there are more than 12 balls or just 12 balls in the bag |
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Sun Dec 29, 2013 4:35 am by lauramay |
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6 balls |
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Mon Jun 15, 2015 10:49 am by johnvic |
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6 balls |
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All times are GMT
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