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If you are thinking this must be the ultimate test of intelligence, think again. Someone already knows all the answers. "I knew it! That person must have paid a huge sum for this." It's not what you think. I agree, it pays to know, but you can know nothing just by paying. To know, you have to sweat, especially when you know that no one, not even the examiner, has all the answers. Worse, no one has ever even attempted these questions. That, my dear, is the real test of intelligence. In all other tests, you can merely attempt to solve a problem that has already been solved. Srinivasa Ramanujan was crushed when he learnt in school that one of his theorems had already been proved by Goethe two centuries before him. From here, he went on to discover the unknown, the unbound, the infinite. Some people know infinity; the rest know zero. Between these two limits lies God. Most people know Him from his existence, but can't prove it. This is one of the eternal puzzles. Do you think anyone has ever found the answer? "I don't have to prove God. I just know He's there." "How do you know for sure?" "All's right with the world, which means God's in His heaven." "Well not everything is right with the world?" "What's wrong?" "The computers in my office have been behaving oddly." "Do you want me to look? I'm pretty good at fixing these toys." "Thanks, but I must warn you. The nature of the problem is unknown." "I'll take it." "Well, I was working in my office one evening when suddenly my computer screen went blank. Then, this message started blinking on it: 'Hello, we are the numbers. We create everything and we also destroy everything. You have not been very quick in working with us and we absolutely hate the lazy. "Then all the whole numbers (integers) between 2 and 400 appeared on the screen. For a while, I didn't know what to do. Then, I entered a number and it got highlighted, while some of the other numbers were erased. I noticed that the computer was running a countdown at the bottom of the screen; I started pressing all the keys, but couldn't stop the countdown and my computer crashed. "I went to another computer and saw the same numbers on it. This time, I did some thinking and observed that whenever I entered a trial number, all screen numbers divisible by that number were erased. Soon, this second machine was also gone." "Leave it to me." You sit in front of a computer, enter a trial number and all screen numbers divisible by the trial number (except the trial number itself) are erased. Suddenly, you see a message on your screen: "Leave only prime numbers on the screen in the least number of attempts. The countdown begins. You have only six weeks." Write at Mind Games, The Tribune, or aditya@tribunemail.com. |
