Monday 20 August 2018

Lets Start The Week,

with a quiz,


first a clue that may or may not help, do not confuse pounds and percentage, OK here goes, the potato paradox,


"You have 100 lb of potatoes, which are 99 percent water by weight, You let them dehydrate until they're 98 percent water, how much do they weigh now?


These are "mathematical" potatoes; you can substitute grapes or jellyfish or amoeba, but given the parameters of the question, what is the answer?


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50 pounds, this is a veridical paradoxWikipedia gives us a couple of explanations for the Potato Paradox,

Method 1



One explanation begins by saying that initially the non-water weight is 1 pound, which is 1% of 100 pounds. Then one asks: 1 pound is 2% of how many pounds? In order for that percentage to be twice as big, the total weight must be half as big.

Method 2

100 lb of potatoes, 99% water (by weight), means that there's 99 lb of water, and 1 lb of solids. It's a 1:99 ratio.

If the water decreases to 98%, then the solids account for 2% of the weight. The 2:98 ratio reduces to 1:49. Since the solids still weigh 1 lb, the water must weigh 49 lb for a total of 50 lbs for the answer.
You can also find the algebraic explanations on the same page, if you want to check further. By the way, potatoes are only around 79% water, but the paradox is in the math as a normal person would visualize it, not the food, as I mentioned do not confuse pounds and percentage.


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