My mother-in-law sent me this and it kinda freaked me out. If this has already been posted I appolgize, but a search didn't turn anything up. It worked for both me and my wife. Does it work for everyone else?
I'm glad it's not just me. I can't help but think that if this person actually channeled their creative energy into something productive we'd have a cure for diabetes already.
And here is the solution (no miracles ): Probably the best way to see why this works is to avoid committing to a specific number and see what happens. Instead of picking a number, I'm going to use 'n' to represent some choice I haven't yet made. Let's see what happens as I follow the steps: 1) n 2) 2n 3) 2n + 5 4) 100n + 250 5) 100n + (2005 or 2006) 6) 100n + (2004 or 2006) - (year of birth) Now, let's look at what I ended up with. If we write it this way, 100n + (2005 or 2006) - (year of birth) = 100n + [(year of my last birthday) - (year of my birth)] = 100n + [my age] This might be a good time to note that if you start with a number greater than 9, or if you're more than 99 years old, the trick won't work. So basically, the trick is saying that 50(2n + 5) + 1750 + i - (year of birth) where i (for 'increment') is the number of years past 2000 for the year when you had your last birthday, equal to 100n + (your age) which is, of course, true (for 0 < n < 10, and age < 100): 50(2n + 5) + 1750 + i - (yob) = (100n + 250) + 1750 + i - (yob) = 100n + (250 + 1750 + i) - yob = 100n + (2000 + i) - (yob) = 100n + (your age) It is true that with these specific numbers, the trick will work only this year. However, if you want it to work next year, you can just change i to '6 or 7' instead of '5 or 6'. So, in general, you have: a(bn + c) + d + i - (year of birth) Also see Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk_archive/Mathematics/June_2006
No, it's magic I tell you! I considered working it out myself but then realized I'd be better off finding a cure for something. So, here I am with no cure and somebody else beating me to it. Oh well.
This reminds me of the show NUMB3RS, except that's actually cool. I hate math. Math is just a hindrance on thought. It's fairly well known that many genuises just arrive at amazing things without really knowing how they got there, then they have to waste time by "doing paperwork" so that the "bureaucrats" can understand it. haha