• fallaciousBasis@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I was watching who wants to be a millionaire and it was the celebrity version. I don’t recall which celebrities were sitting in the chair but I recall the question and the answer.

    The question was: supreme court justices all shake hands with each other before they have a session or something, so how many times are hands shaken total among all judges?

    Really simple answer if you know your math(and how many justices there are), which they ultimately asked the audience and I kind of figured ‘not a lot’ are going to get it right, but over 70 percent did. I was surprised.

    Maybe one of the celebrities was Helen Hunt? I’m not going to spoil the answer any further!

    • StinkyFingerItchyBum@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago
      Spoiler

      8 Injustices + 1 Chief Injustice = 9 handshakers. Each handshaker shakes 8 people’s excluding themselves, but you musn’t count the same handshake twice for each person.

      The first shakes 8 times and is done. The second shakes 7 times because the 8th was already included in the count of the first person…

      8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1=36

      • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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        4 months ago

        If you want to make the arithmetic faster for any number, (n+1)*n / 2 is the closed form expression for summing the (whole) numbers 1 to n

        So (8+1)*8/2 = 36 in this case