Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

105

I wonder if Gideon would get it right?

No not 105

ok, not anything.

Blue flower on last line only has 4 petals instead of 5.

We are talking 'Mathematics' here, so certain established and recognised methods of 'notation' have to apply.

From Line 1 we can easily establish, that one Red Flower = 20.

From Line 2 we can easily establish, that one Blue Flower = 5

Let's look at Line 3 and examine what it actually does say, as against what it doesn't say.

Now there are two Yellow Flowers positioned side by side in Line 3. In mathematics, when two symbols are placed side by side then this indicates 'multiplication' is indicated and not 'addition'. eg. bb = b squared.

Simple rearrangement in Line 3 tells us that the value of (one Yellow Flower squared) = 2

So one Yellow Flower has the value of "the square root of 2"

In Line 4 convention tells us, that we first have to do the multiplication part of the equation. So we have:

One Yellow Flower + (20 x5) = ?

or One Yellow Flower = ? - 100

Now we know, that One Yellow flower = "the square root of 2".

Substituting and rearranging, the equation now becomes:

? = 100 + "the square root of 2". (Google tells me that the square root of 2 = 1.4142)

So we now have an answer:

? = 1.4142 + 100 = 101.4142

Bugger! I missed the fact that the Line 4 Blue Flower only has 4 petals.

Hmmm?

If we can infer, that a 5-petal Blue Flower has the value of 5, then obviously, a 4-petal
Blue Flower might be sensibly consider to have a value of 4.

Correcting the error in my previous post and using a new value of 4 for the 4-petal Blue Flower in Line 4, we now have:

? = 80 +1.4142 = 81.4142

I don't think two bananas side by side ever represent 'bananas squared'.

But shouldn't the answer be 84?

No

The answer. 81.

This is calculated because the puzzle tells us that the red flower is worth 20, that a blue flower with five petals is worth 5, and two yellow flowers are worth two.

In the final line there is one yellow flower added to one red flower multiplied by one blue flower with four petals, making the equation 1 + 20 x 4.

You multiply 20 by four, to get 80, and then add the one to get the final answer of 81.

Dont think thats right, its set out as: 1 + 20 = 21, x 4 = 84

But may have to ask my grandchildren :-)

That sounds like Broon type sums.

ie, it could mean anything, depending on how you shuffle the cards.

psst! wonna buy some gold bars?

Well, we don't have enough information to do other than a 'reasonable guess' about the value of a four petalled Blue Flower.

This makes the problem technically unsolvable.

But I think I'm right about what two Yellow Flowers 'side by side' signifies.

ie. In algebra, which is what this is, it means 'Yellow Flower x Yellow Flower' or 'Yellow Flower squared'.

There's also a rule, that when brackets aren't used, you always do the multiplication and division bits of a problem like this before the addition and subtraction bits are done:

Mathematical Precedence.............https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations

Thank you for showing us the problem, Haystack. It took me away from the TV for quite a while. :-)

You do multiplication before addition.

The order of priority is

Unary minus (that is -3 say, mainly due to negative indices)
Brackets
Indices
Division and Multiplication.
Addition and Subtraction.

I added unary minus because it is usually left out for some strange reason. It is necessary due to

x^-3 (^ being an indice)

-3+2 is essentially minus 3 plus 2 although it could be rearranged as 2-3.

Unary minus is always performed first in expressions.

If you like problems then here is one that looks impossible. It is based on a real US game show called Lets Make a Deal. It has similarities to Deal or No Deal.

There are 3 doors, behind which are two goats and a car.

You pick a door (call it door A). You’re hoping for the car of course.

The game show host, examines the other doors (B & C) and always opens one of them with a goat (Both doors might have goats; he’ll randomly pick one to open)

Here’s the game: Do you stick with door A (original guess) or switch to the other unopened door? Does it matter?

Surprisingly, the odds aren’t 50-50. If you switch doors you’ll win 2/3 of the time!

Thats all too easy, I don't think it's as straight forward as that after all it's a chinese puzzle, so I used my abucas. :0)