The Lost Sheep Challenge

[Charles Curley]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2007 at 04:16:11PM -0600, Andy Bradford wrote:
> Thus said "Sasha Pachev" on Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:07:52 MDT:
> 
> > You have 100 sheep  in a flock and they are all  numbered. Each has an
> > identification tag with a number - 1 through 100. One of them is lost.
> > Other sheep are  scattered over the pasture and cannot  be examined in
> > sequential order  of their numbers. Come  up with a method  that would
> > allow you  to quickly  identify the  lost sheep. The  use of  a simple
> > arithmetical calculator is allowed.
> 
> Hopefully its  an HP  with RPN,  but that might  violate your  roll call
> rule. :-)
> 
> Just add up the  numbers 1--100 for a total of  5050.

Rather than add them all up, understand that from one to 100 there are
50 pairs of number, each of which adds up to 101. So 50*101... making
it easy enough to do on an algebraic calculator.

-- 

Charles Curley                  /"\    ASCII Ribbon Campaign
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