Can you sort this out?!


Question: 12 1 1 1 2 1 ....?

whats the next number?


Answers: 12 1 1 1 2 1 ....?

whats the next number?

Answer is 3 - supposed to represent the chimes of a clock - I remember reading this in one of Asimov's books as a kid - most people don't know it nowadays (I only know it because someone gave me Bell's "Men of Mathematics" and for the next few years I was enthralled with logic, calculus, non-euclidian geometry, the patterns of numbers and read everything on it I could get my hands on - it was like looking at the underlying architecture of the universe - still remember how wonderful that was).

Anyway, your series is a famous example illustrating the difference between a series which has a mathematical relationship (like a Fibonacci series) and a series which has a logical relationship (like the pattern of the chimes of the clock). Before the digital age, this pattern would have been instantly recognizable to most of the population - a typical clock would strike once on the half hour and the same number of chimes as the hour - so 12 o'clock, 12:30, 1:00, 1:30, 2:00, 2:30, 3:00.

Since you like math, here's a favorite poem for you from one of my favorite writers, a man who appreciated we women - can you identify the author?:

"Lobachevsky alone has looked on Beauty bare.
She curves in here, she curves in here. She curves out there.
Her parallel clefts come together to tease
In un-callipygianous-wise;
With feweer than one hundred eighty degrees
Her glorious triangle lies.
Her double-trumpet symmetry Riemann did not court-
His tastes to simpler-curvedness, the buxom Teuton sort!
An ellipse is fine for as far as it goes,
But modesty, away!
If I'm going to see Beauty without her clothes
Give me hyperbolas any old day.

The world is curves, I've heard it said,
And straightway in it nothing lies.
This then my wish, before I'm dead:
To look through Lobachevsky's eyes."

...also thanks to Cubescience who worked it out. Report It


Other Answers (11)




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  • jd's Avatar by jd
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    November 08, 2007
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    1

    God made bunnys too!!!!
    (\__/)
    (='.'=)
    (")_(")

    you wuold think it would be 1 but it is actually 1

    1112311211

    describes the line.
    one 1 one 2 three 1s one 2 one 1

    1

    The sequences continues like this ...3,1,4,1,5 - it's the numbers are the chimes of a clock that strikes once on the half hour.

    1 that took me so long but then Figure it out in the past two hours! But again it is 1

    ...1...1...1...3?? i thank

    6
    it sums up to 12
    =)

    1.......1........12.........1..........1... want me to go on?

    37.... blahhahahahahaaaaaa



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