Why are the weights in a weight box kept in a 5:2:2:1 ratio .
Answers
Explanation:
This is interesting. There may well be a simple historical reason why this is so, but if I had to guess from a purely mathematical perspective…
First, observe that you can make every weight from 1 to 10 (units) using the above four weights.
1=11=1
2=22=2
3=1+23=1+2
4=2+24=2+2
5=55=5
6=1+56=1+5
7=2+57=2+5
8=1+2+58=1+2+5
9=2+2+59=2+2+5
10=1+2+2+510=1+2+2+5
Can we do the same thing simply using 4:3:2:1 instead? It turns out we can. So what gives?
Let us calculate the average number of weights required to make up a particular sum in both the cases. This average comes out to be 2.1 in the 5:2:2:1 case and, wait for it, 2.0 in the 4:3:2:1 case. We still don’t have an answer!
Knowing what we do, my best bet would be that the 5-unit weight is more commonly used than the 4-unit weight, and so it is more desirable to have the 5-unit weight as a ‘basic’ weight rather than making it up from smaller weights (1+4). We can, though, afford to have the 4-unit weight as a combination of (2+2).
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