Another easy one just for fun
Dan Donaldson
combine five 5's using +,-,*, or/ to make 24. You cannot put them together as a compound number (ie 55) and you must use all 5 and each only once.
Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Another easy one just for fun
Dan Donaldson
combine five 5's using +,-,*, or/ to make 24. You cannot put them together as a compound number (ie 55) and you must use all 5 and each only once.
I can do it assuming
Alex Y
that parentheses are allowed, and the "*" can be doubled as a symbol for raising to the power. Otherwise, back to the drawing board.
Re: I can do it assuming
Dan Donaldson
Parenthesis OK. Exponents, not OK. You can do it with just the 4 basic functions.
Also
Dan Donaldson
They resolve to basically the same thing, but there at least 2 ways to do it.
hint
Dan Donaldson
addition is not called for, only the other three. Think smaller.
Re: more hint
Dan Donaldson
each one of the solutions uses one of the operations twice and the other ones once, but a different one for the twice.
answer (don't look if still working on it)
Dan Donaldson
There are at least two possible ways to do it. Here are the two I know of:
5(5-(5/5/5))
5(5-(5/(5*5)))
Excellent!
Alex Y
My answer with exponents was 5*5-5**(5-5).
But when you ruled out exponents, I was stumped!
Re: Excellent!
Dan Donaldson
That is an elegant solution. Doubt if I would have come up with that.
Re: Excellent!
Lee Schierer McKean, PA
one more I think ((5*5*5)-5)/5
Lee
Yup, good one.