MMM #20: Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie
24 Nov 2008 Quan Quach 10 comments 442 views
Blinkdagger was down for all of last week, but we did not forget about Monday Math Madness! Good luck to all who decide to participate. Last week’s MMM was pretty interesting and received a fair share of submissions. Hopefully we get the same response!
The Problem Statement
This week’s problem is all about pie. This week, Rob’s wife has baked a delicious apple pie for the boys at blinkdagger:
Rob’s wife cuts the pie in the following manner:
Quan, Rob, and Daniel all love apple pie (especially with vanilla ice cream on the side). Naturally, each of them want to get the largest amount of pie. Since Rob’s wife baked the pie, Rob gets to choose first. Which section should Rob choose? Mathematically show how you arrived at this conclusion.
Assume the pie is perfectly circular in shape and that the cuts in the pie are perfectly vertical.
The Prize
The winner will receive a 10 dollar gift certificate to Amazon.com!
The Rules
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Email your answers to mondaymathmadness at gmail dot com.
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Inelgible for any one person to win more than once per year. But you should still submit your answer!
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Answer must be explained. You must show your work! We will accept answers in the form of a MATLAB script as well. We will be the final judge on whether an answer was properly explained or not.
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The deadline to submit answers is December 1st 2008, Monday 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time
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The winners will be chosen randomly from all the submittals using a random number generator.
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The winner will be announced at 9:00 AM PST December 5th, 2008.
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Comments for this post should only be used to clarify the problem. Please do not discuss ANY potential solutions.
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Please spread the word about our contest by stumbling this webpage!
10 Responses to “MMM #20: Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie”
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Include MATLAB code in your comment by doing the following:
<pre lang="MATLAB">
%insert code here
</pre>
[...] a new MMM at Blinkdagger right now. SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “MMM #19: Two winners!”, url: [...]
Wow, my wife will be so happy that she has “made the website”. And I can say from experience that her pies are delicious. Maybe Dan can sample them after moving to MA next year.
As for the problem, if you make the mistake of letting me pick first - the answer is ALL THREE. No pie for you!
Happy Thanksgiving,
Rob
Can we assume the pie is a cylinder? (the sides are orthogonal to the bottom and don’t flare out?)
And, wow, that’s a big pie.
given the dimension of the pie, I don’t think it’s worth to decide which slice is the largest
Hi Kate,
Yes, assume that the pie is a perfect cylinder.
Quan
Cute, but too easy.
very easy….
but fun
isn’t it metres not meters. Or is that the US spelling
[...] the next few days, Quan and Daniel will be picking a random winner for MMM #20 over at Blinkdagger. We received 20 solutions. What’s very interesting to me is that, of [...]
too easy