Friday, November 2, 2007

5) A Fair Split

A large cookie is to be divided between two children. They are both anxious to have the cutting done fairly so that the other doesn't end up with a bigger piece.

How can the children be sure that they have received a true half of the cookie?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The question was...

"How can the children be sure that they have received a true half of the cookie?"

This asumes the cookie has already been cut which is hard enough to do with truely equal portions since cookies tend to be irregular shapes and not truely circular. An aproximate average of the cookie's diameter can then be divided by 2 to get an aproximate average radius to use as a center point to use to bisect the cookie.

In the end though, the only way to tell if they have received a fair split after it is cut is to weigh each cookie "half" and see if they are close to the same weight.

????

Ron said...

Actually, the answer we were looking for is let one kid cut the cookie in half, and let the other kid pick the half he wants...