The Mena weekly star., 1897-12-15
FREAKS OF FIGURES.
Puzzles for Those Who Find Them
 Interesting.

interesting.
 Who has not, at some period of his existence, been asked: If a goose weighs ten pounds and half it's own weight, what is the weight of the roose?r And who has not been tempt ed to reply on the instant, 15 pounds. The correct answer being, of course, 20 pounds. Indeed, it is astonishing what a very simple query will sometimes catch a wise man mapping. Even the fol- lowing have been known to succeed:
 ''How many days would it take to cut up piece of cloth 50 yards long, one yard being cut off every day?"
 Or again: "A snail climbing up a post 20 feet high ascends five feet every day and slips down four feet every night; how long will the snail take to reach the top of the post?"
 Or again: "A wise man having q win- dow one yard high and one yard wide, and, requiring more light, enlarged the window to twice it's former size; yet the window was still only one yard high and one yard wide. How was this done?" This is catch question in ge ometry, as the preceding were catch questions in arithmetic-the window being diamond shaped at first and aft erward made square.
 As to the two former, it is scarcely necessary seriously to point out that the the answer to the first is not 30 days, but 49 and to the second, not 20 days, but f6-since the snail, who gains one foot each day for 15 days, climbs on the sixteenth day on the top of the pole and there remains.
 A very curious number Is 142,857, gives the same figures in the same or der, beginning at different point, but if multiplied by it gives all mines; multiplied by it equals 142,s57; multi piled by it equals 55,714; multiplied by 3, equals 42S.751; multiplied by 4, equals 571, ,42s; multiplied by 5, equals 714,2S5; multiplied by 6, equals s57, ,142; multiplied by 2, equals o90,999; multi ply 142, ,s57 by 8, and you have 1, ,142,S ,S56. Then add the first figure to the last and you have 142, 2,857-the original num- Der, the figures exactly the same as at the start.
 The number 37 has this strange pc culiarity: Multiply by 3,or any multiple of three. up to 27, it gives three figures all alike. Thus } times 37 will be III; twice times (6 times) 37 will be 222; times 3 times @ times) 37 gives three threes; four times three times (12 times) 37, three fours; and so on.
 The wonderful provocative power of figures-or, rather, their accumulative growth--has been exemplified in the fa- miliar story of the farmer undertaking to pay his farlier one grain of wheat for the first nail, two for the second, and to give tl1e farrier more wheat than was grown ia all England.
 Here is another example: Take the number 15. we will say; multiply that by itself. and you get 225. Now multi ply 225 by itself and so on until 15 prod ucts have been multiplied by them selves in turn.
 You don't think that a difficult prob le1ml Well, you may be clever math- ematician, but it would take you about quarter of a century to work out this simple little sum- The final product called for contains 3S,5S9 figures, the first of which are 1,442 Allowing three figures to an inch, the answer would be over 1,oTo feet long. To perform the op- eration would require about 500,0o0,000 figures. If they can be made at the rate of one minute, person working at the rate of ten hours a day for 300 days in each year would be 2s years about it. If, in multiplying, he should make row of ciphers, as he does in other figures, the number of figures would be more than 523 ,939,228. This would be the precise number of figures used if the.product of the left hand fig ure in each multiplicand by each fig ure of the multiplier was always a sim gle figure; but, as is most frequent,and yet not always two figures, the method employed to obtain the foregoing re- suit cannot be accurately applied. As snming that the cipher is used on an average once in ten times. 475,000,0oo, 900 approximates the actual number Brooklyn Eagle.
 Thanksgiving Dinner.
 fks fvi " i,,,r .l U ,ua.s nO,,,;p,w .nl