Q1. definately implies that there is a cost, and hence that lamps are sold. If you make the assumption that the question is answerable, then the cost must be non-zero, else the answer is ‘all of them, but I don’t know how many that is; of course, except if I’m trying to pay with Drachmas, which are worth nothing’. If there are at least two lamps then each is worth four times the other, so sixteen times as much as itself, so is worth zero, which we’ve already ruled out. And we’ve assumed at least one lamp is on sale. Hence, there is exactly one lamp for sale. That wasn’t too hard.
Q2. Using 0.0 and 0 implies that the numbers are approximate, and that 0.0 is more precise, so while 0 is not necessarily less than 0.0, it can be, so I’m forced to guess that.
Q6. Hmm… if 1 exists in a ring, then everything is divisible by it, but if it doesn’t then I’m not sure what 2 could possibly be (if not 1+1).
My memory’s a bit hazy, but I seem to recall my favorite astronomer (which is totally unrelated to my only knowing one) explaining that the universe might actually be a poincare 3-sphere
Though one would hope the shape of the universe stayed in the same (topological) state. If there’s one thing scarier than the universe being non-‘spherical’ its that it used to be but isn’t now
Now that I think of it, in High School, there was an Algebra teacher that probably kept teaching for several years too many. She’ d constantly lose her place in a book of problems and we’d parody her (after class of course).
“If ‘A’ can paint a room in 3 hours and ‘B’ can paint a room in 4 hours, if they both start painting the room together, when will the bus get to Philadelphia ?”
Maybe it’s a generational thing. Do they still show educational videos and films in schools in the US, as they did when I was there some decades ago? And does that dinosaur known as the “filmstrip” still exist?
The explanation is simple: the questions are nonsensical, and the answers equally so. Any of the above people claiming to have achieved high marks on the quiz are either very silly or insane, or possibly both.
“Look Around You” was a BBC comedy which made fun of the sort of overly serious (and often patronizing) educational film that tended to be shown in secondary school in the 1970’s. The website is merely a supplement to the program (which, not coincidentally, recently came out on DVD), and is in much the same vein as the program itself.
