Today's Brain Teaser - 12/17/2007

[The_Twisted_Ear]

Theoretically, two rabbits could produce how many offspring in three years?

a: 3 million
b: 33 million
c: 333 million?

 

[LateApex]

Theoretically, two rabbits could produce how many offspring in three years?

a: 3 million
b: 33 million
c: 333 million?

I seem to remember this one uses the fibonacci series, no?

so:

1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 13 ....

F(n) = 0 if n = 0
F(n) = 1 if n = 1
F(n) = F(n - 1) + F(n - 2) if n > 1

So plug and chug from there...

 

[theArtistFormerlyKnownAs]

I seem to remember this one uses the fibonacci series, no?

so:

1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 13 ....

F(n) = 0 if n = 0
F(n) = 1 if n = 1
F(n) = F(n - 1) + F(n - 2) if n > 1

So plug and chug from there...

you bastard. I thought i was done with school and now you bring out what I just did this previous semester, in a class I barely passed

well, anyone got a good calc on them? This theory works for me.

 

[LateApex]

It's trivial if you write a comp program to do it..

It deals with recursion. Each 'bit' of the function is computed and passed to itself thus recurring until a known case is found... Then it works its way back up the chain for the final answer...

 

[theArtistFormerlyKnownAs]

It's trivial if you write a comp program to do it..

It deals with recursion. Each 'bit' of the function is computed and passed to itself thus recurring until a known case is found... Then it works its way back up the chain for the final answer...

i know how it works lol. this is one of the few things i actually understood in the stupid class. I just don't have a graphing calc with me to input the formula, nor access to any program design software...i'm at work lol. why don't you write a quick Vb Program and plug it in? or just wait for someone else to answer. lol

 

[belvak]

Being lazy today, I went right to Yahoo and came up with this tidbit from an issue of The Pet Gazette:

Having seen figures on dog and cat reproduction, such as “a single female cat and her offspring can produce 120,000 kittens in 7 years,” we couldn’t help wondering how many babies one rabbit might produce. So, we contacted Dr. Dana Krempels at the University of Miami, who kindly agreed to allow her calculations on rabbit fecundity to be reproduced. Krempels came up with the following statistics: one female rabbit and her offspring can theoretically produce 50,653 rabbits in three years, 69 million in five years and 64 BILLION in seven years!​

The numbers don't match any of the choices though, so they are obviously using a different formula.

 

[LateApex]

Did a quick applet:

3,524,578

 

[clevalley]

This is assuming all rabbits breed in pairs and result in pairs and the laws of insest is ignored right?

33 M? :shrug:

 

[~mellabella~]

I choose option D.

D) TOO MANY!!!!

 

[The_Twisted_Ear]

This is assuming all rabbits breed in pairs and result in pairs and the laws of insest is ignored right?

33 M? :shrug:

Correct!

b: 33 million

Tomorrow's will be tougher!

 

[toppick08]

Correct!

b: 33 million

Tomorrow's will be tougher!

That'll take aloooot of BB'Q sauce.

 

[aps45819]

Correct!

b: 33 million

Tomorrow's will be tougher!

Since you didn't specify the 2 rabbits and their offspring, just the 2 rabbits, I'll say about 72.
Figure 4 litters per year of 6 x 3 years = 72

 

[dthb4438]

rabbits

I actually knew that only because it was on a trivia game once and I am quite surprised that I remembered it. Very good question!

 

[LateApex]

33?

Can you provide the work that shows the result?

 

[LateApex]

Ah..

Never mind.

I looked at how I worked it and forgot to add all of the results together to get the final answer...