The Problem Statement

Secret Hand Shakes

Every Friday night there is a Pizza Party at the blinkdagger mansion. On this particular Friday, Quan and Daniel have invited Rob, Jeff, and Sol to join the fun. Each person is allowed to bring one guest which brings the number of participants to 10. Below is a list of teach attendee and their guest:

Attendee | Guest
Quan | Carrie Underwood (Country Singer)
Daniel | Bruce Wayne (Billionaire)
Jeff | Miley Cyrus (Teen Pop Princess)
Rob | Soldier from Call of Duty (Modern Warfare Expert)
Sol | Dilbert (Engineer)

Upon arrival, all of the guest exchange greetings, with some people shaking hands. Being the astute engineer that he is, Quan notices that:

  1. No one shakes their own hand.
  2. No one shakes the hand of the person he/she came with.
  3. No one shakes the same person’s hand more than once.

After the exchange, Quan asks each person how many hands they each shook. Everyone tells him a different number.

How many hands did Quan shake?

The Bounty

mini_calculator.jpgThe prize for this edition of MMM is the TI-Nspire CAS graphing calculator, provided by Texas Instruments Education Technology. This is a great calculator and will surely put your ancient TI-85 or TI-86 to shame.

Texas Instruments’ graphing technology is research proven to increase student understanding and achievement. The TI-Nspire is Texas Instruments’ latest graphing calculator for algebra through college-level math courses and is available at retail stores nationwide. For more information, please visit www.ti-nspire.com. If you win this contest, you will be the most popular person in any of your math classes!

Special Thanks to TI!

We would also like to take the opportunity here to thank our sponsors over at TI! Thanks for supplying such great prizes for MMM!

Congratulations to Jeff Hatley

Congratulations to Jeff Hatley for his winning submission for MMM #13! There were many cool problems that were submitted, but we decided that this one was the most appropriate for Monday Math Madness. Some of the submissions were very creative while some of them were quite difficult. Overall, it was great seeing an eclectic set of submissions.

The Rules

  1. Email your answers to mondaymathmadness at gmail dot com.

  2. Depending on how many submissions we receive, we will be giving out additional prizes, giving you yet more chances to win. We’d also like to give a prize out to the “best” or “most creative” answer.

  3. Elgible for any one person to win! Even if you have won a previous MMM. (Note: except for Jeff Hately who submitted this problem)

  4. 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.

  5. The deadline to submit answers is September 9th 2008, Monday 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time

  6. The winners will be chosen randomly from all the submittals using a random number generator.

  7. The winner will be announced at 9:00 AM PST September 12th, 2008.

  8. Comments for this post should only be used to clarify the problem. Please do not discuss ANY potential solutions.

  9. Please spread the word about our contest by stumbling this webpage!