Here’s another one: if you could fold it 50 times over, how wide and long is the stack? Assume the original is 16 x 16 inches (and thus a square, so the final fold should create a square-I think). My estimate is a few microns wide. 
I assume the OP is familiar with the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function?
Yup. I thought of including a link to Al Bartlett in the OP but I decided against it.
There’s also Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns:
It’s one thing to not look at a stupid brain teaser thing carefully. It’s another to have to “remember” the order of operations.
I agree that people don’t really remember factoring and such without kicking their brains into gear or going to look it up, but order of operations? PEMDAS? How do people who can’t remember that do anything with math? I can even see how parentheses and exponents might be hard to remember. But if you (the general you) can’t remember that multiplication/division comes before addition/subtraction, I’d say your schools failed you. It’s really one of the most basic concepts, on par with tipping at restaurants or dividing up portions or deciding what people need to pay on a receipt. And this is from someone who hated math and became an English major.
Also, you apparently “nerfed” that equation above as well, because the “gotcha” equation was 1+1+1+1+1x0. The one you posted equals 0. Also, I don’t think nerfed means what you think it means.
anything else you want to tell me I’m wrong about, BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed?
Why do some people have difficulty grasping exponential growth?
Why do some people have difficulty grasping the difference between plural s and possessive 's?
Why do some people have difficulty grasping geography?
Why do some people have difficulty grasping social skills?
*Because people are different. *
You give a poor impression of yourself socially, if this is truly how you approach people in real life. Do you think of yourself as a modern-day Socrates, or something? :rolleyes:
How do you figure?
Okay, but that’s not an explanation.
I’ve tried this about 6 or 7 times, one-on-one only with people who I was close to and who I knew would be good-natured enough to put up with it. The entire process takes about five minutes. Several of the people found it entertaining, but some did not. I was sensitive to the fact that some people were getting a bit irritated and I’m pretty sure that I didn’t offend anyone. Most of the time, I introduced the brain teaser within a broader discussion of exponential growth (e.g. population growth or compound interest in an investment portfolio) and I used it as an example of how outlandish and unintuitive some results can be.
The question asks how high the stack will be and, although you could express the answer in inches, it is more meaningful to express it in larger units. It’s more difficult to go from inches to miles than it is to go from millimeters to kilometers.
That’s all.
Cripes, I don’t blame them. Who are these people you’re asking and what situation are you asking it in? If we were hanging out drinking beer and suddenly someone came out with a patronising maths lecture and wouldn’t let it go, I’d be pissed off too. Is this what you do for fun?
:rolleyes: I’m sure the condescension is thoroughly appreciated.
ETA:
Seriously, I’m really quite curious as to how these conversations start. Do you just launch into this?
If you haven’t yet encountered it, read John Allen Paulos’ book Innumeraxcy. It’s many years old now, but it was a NYT bestseller, and its evaluation of the math skills of the general public is still spot-on.
Not only do people have trouble with the exponential function, they have real difficulty with probability, essentially equating “one in a million” with 1% and the like. I suspect most people don’t understand that the Decibel scale and the Richter scale are really logarithmic, or understand them.
Please read my response above to ** rachelellogram**. I’ve never done this while hanging out with friends drinking beer, although I can imagine raising the question with a particular group of friends.
Some people actually discuss things about science, politics, finance, and even math. Not sure what you’re curious about.