by simonndunda
Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2012 02:30 AM
Do you remember when you were in primary school and your standard 7 maths teacher would tell your age by having you do some simple arithmetic and tell him the answer, an answer which will be your age. Well, this was my case. My primary school maths teacher a Mr. Mutisya was a 'famous' mathematician at least in the school, he would solve mathematical problems mentally, without a pen, or chalk, and for standard 7 students, he had something special for them. He would be a magician and can tell their age by having take a random number, multiply it within another, substract another, add another divide another and the final answer would be your age. That was just marvelous and we kept wondering how he did it.
I had forgotten about it all until recently a friend of mine whom we were in the same standard 7 class forwarded me a mail whose subject was 'YOUR AGE BY CHOCOLATE MATHS'. It triggered the memories of my STD 7 teacher.
Here are the contents of the mail.
YOUR AGE BY CHOCOLATE MATHS
Don't tell me your age; you'd probably lie anyway-but the Hershey Man will know!
YOUR AGE BY CHOCOLATE MATH
This is pretty neat.
DON'T CHEAT BY SCROLLING DOWN FIRST!
It takes less than a minute ....
Work this out as you read ....
Be sure you don't read the bottom until you've worked it out!
This is not one of those waste of time things, it's fun.
1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate (more than once but less than 10)
2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold)
3. Add 5
4. Multiply it by 50 -- I'll wait while you get the calculator
5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1760 ...
If you haven't, add 1759..
6... Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.
You should have a three digit number
The first digit of this was your original number
(i.e., how many times you want to have chocolate each week).
The next two numbers are
YOUR AGE! (Oh YES, it is!!!!!)
THIS IS THE ONLY YEAR (2010) IT WILL EVER WORK, SO SPREAD IT AROUND WHILE IT LASTS.
Chocolate Calculator.
I went through the mail and followed all the steps and to my surprise, i ended up with a three digit number, the first digit being the number of times i have chocolote per week and the rest being my age. This got me thinking seriously how it worked. It also triggered my STD 7 memories. Then i decided i was now 'big' enough to 'crack it'.
Here is my crack
To get my age, you need two things: my year of birth and the current year. Subtract the two numbers (birth year from current year) and there is my age. OOOOOOOH!. So this chocolate maths is not magic after all coz at some point I gave them my birth year and they assumed the current year is 2010 (Notice they say it will work in 2010 only). The whole of that calculation just Subtracts your birth year from 2010, the rest cancels out and evaluates to zero, OKaaaay!.
To prove my realization, i decided to formulate my own chocolate maths, a very simple version.
And here it is
Take the number of times you have chocolate per week (btw 1 and 7), now multiply it by
100, then add 2010, then subtract the year you were born. Then if you
have not yet had your birthday, subtract 1. There you are. The first
digit is the number of times you have chocolate, the second is your
age.
So lets see how my simple version works before 'cracking' the real chocolate maths.
If your age is 21 and you have chocolate 3 times a week, then I want to give you 321 as an answer. If your age is 34 and you have chocolate 7 times a week, then the answer would be 734.
So i simply want to multiply the number of times you have chocolate a week by 100 and then add your age. But then you are not giving me your age but instead your birth year, I want to substract your birth year from 2010. So thats how my simple version works. The 1 year subtracted at the end is for those who have not had their birthdays this year yet. e.g if you were born in 1980 and have had your birthday (Assuming today is June 2010) then it was your 30th birthday, else you are still 29.
Lets go the chocolate maths now.
Assuming our subject has already had their birthday this year, then all the steps in the chocolate maths can be expressed in a single formular
((((n*2)+5)*50)+1760)-Year Of Birth
where n is desired number of times the subject to have chocolate per week
which can be alternatively expressed as
(n*2*50)+(5*50)+1760-Year Of Birth
after working out this formular, you realize that it evaluates to
(n*100)+2010-Year Of Birth
(100 is a result of the 2 * 50
while the 2010 is a result of the (5*50)+1760.
So I dont need to say more coz its now fully opened up. Hope you enjoyed reading and followed through.
In conclusion, real magic will not require you to use your year of birth coz it sells everything, and I dont believe in magic that's why i took time to do this.