Suppose there is this little town with a finite number of people: (1) No two inhabitants have exactly the same number of hairs. (2) No inhabitant has exactly 743 hairs or no hairs at all. (3) There are more inhabitants than there are hairs on the head of any inhabitant. So, what is the highest possible number of inhabitants in that little town? *
Answers
Answered by
7
Answer:
743 is the correct answer. take as an example, that there are 519 people in the town. to be orderly, we line them up by the number of hairs on their heads from 0-743. thats 743 people, but by our conditions, the last person may not have 743 hairs because that was specified. it was also specified that there are more people than hairs so the the last person must have less than 743 hairs. yet, if that were true there would be a repeat in number of hairs since we've already accounted for people from bald to 742 hairs and 743 is off limits. so for 744 or more, to paraphrase a quote, 'no soup for us.'
Explanation:
Similar questions