[2016-04-05] college funding

[legodavee123]

Fun Fact:

He got the better end of the deal. Had he elected option 1, he would not have gone to college, and would have gotten $0.00.

(That's actually what I was expecting the alt-text to be!)

DaveE

[Mez]

Man, I came to this forum for the first time ever and realized it's not for me based on this thread.

He said one penny on square one, two on square two "and so on". That implies he's putting two on all the other squares as well. It's an English joke, not a math joke and most of you seem to overthink it WAY hard.

It's a math, english, and dick dad joke. It's a math joke because the dad described the beginning of the chessboard wheat problem, t's a dick dad joke because he presumably taught his son the chessboard wheat problem, and it's an English joke because he quite literally meant "and two on squares 2-64".

[ManoBore]

If you assume that the pennies are about 1 mm thick, then did the exercise the way the son was expecting, the final tile would have a stack of coins one light year tall.

[legodavee123]

If you assume that the pennies are about 1 mm thick, then did the exercise the way the son was expecting, the final tile would have a stack of coins one light year tall.

Pennies are actually about 1.51892mm thick, so the final square would have a stack 1.48 light years tall! ... And about the mass of Cordelia (the innermost moon of Uranus). ... And about 10 times the surface area of the Earth if laid out flat, assuming 100% filled space (about 2/3 of the surface area of Neptune).

He actually may have made the smart choice, as this amount of pennies would cause inflation to destroy their value, and possibly destroy the Earth's ecosystem as well. He chose wisely.

DaveE

[Drago10010]

But shouldn't the total be $4.07, since he said "squares" and not "spaces"? lol

[kst]

I got that the son was expecting $184,467,440,737,095,516.15 (doubling the amount on each square).

To be honest if the son was expecting that much, and his dad isn't some kind of genie out of a bottle then he's a bit clueless for choosing it. How is dad going to pay up such an amount?

...

I just accepted that as part of the joke.

[a1s]

it's an English joke because he quite literally meant "and two on squares 2-64".

Could you explain that again? I'm pretty sure "so on" means "following the patter established above", not "using the last entry for the entire list, except for special cases described above".

(I'm leaning towards the 2^n cents on the 2^n th square interpretation)

[Netweasel]

Personally, I think it would have been funnier if the amount given had been $20.80.

(1+2+3+ ... +62+63+64)