[seqfan] Re: Miis France and OEIS

[Olivier Gerard]

I cannot see the point in asking this to anyone, in a beauty pageant or
anywhere,
especially in this biased form.

In fact this was asked to the twenty-something final contestants
in the middle of a General Knowledge Quizz they had to take before the show
exactly like this :

36. Si 1 est égal à 5, 2 est égal à 25, 3 à 605, 4 à 10855, 5 est égal à
quoi?
a. 5 est égal à 1
b. 5 est égal à 2
c. 5 est égal à 5
d. 5 est égal à 25

And in this form the only (barely defensible but not exclusive) answers are
a) and c)
and a) is the accepted answer.  What a mockery of the meaning of
*equal* and of the meaning of *is* !

A more mathematical interpretation would have been :
f(1) = 5, f(2) = 25, f(3)= 605, f(4)= 10855
What is f(5) ?

Polynomial interpolation gives : 39885

But I would not attempt the computation without paper and there is nothing
particular
or exceptional to this polynomial or series of values which starts as a
geometric series
then oscillates.

Question 37 is more of the OEIS kind:

37. Compléter cette suite logique : 89-87-83-77-69
a. 59
b. 47
c. 53
d. 62

Most will have counted differences : 2, 4, 6, 8, ... so out of simplicity
one could guess the answer is a) 59 that was the accepted answer
but as all seqfan members know, any numeric answer is "logical".

At least, last year's quizz asked to know the definition for bissector
(which is required knowledge by the end of middle-school in France).
Olivier





On Sun, Feb 6, 2022 at 8:30 PM jean-paul allouche <
jean-paul.allouche at imj-prg.fr> wrote:

> No joke (and possibly no interest).
> I have seen this yesterday and unsucessfully
> tried to find a smart answer. Finally I seem to
> have read that *the* answer was just about
> symmetry of equality: if 1=5, then 5=1.
> Totally dull (the link given by Michel Marcus
> even claims symmetry being intuitively stronger
> than reflexivity, hence 5=1 being a more natural
> answer than 5=5...! At least that link cites
> the OEIS)
>
> jp
>
>