high MATH

The 2015 winner of the Raytheon Math Counts National competition series was 14 year old Kevin Liu from Carmel, Indiana. The young man was stereotypical of a young Asian genius. He was kind, child-like, respectful and confident in his skin. He was a guest on the Kelly and Michael show and the producers created a game for the hosts and the boy. It was funny. Five questions were asked with 30 seconds to answer them. The boy won, of course. He got the answers before the time count started, or in the middle of a sentence. Look at the questions and if you are like me long out of school you probably get none of the answers.

 

~ Gregory E. Woods,

5.11.15

Question:

A car is traveling at a uniform rate of 60 mph. How many minutes after the car passes highway mile marker 180 will it pass highway marker 222?

Answer: (42)

Question:

Kelly (Ripa) found 2/3 of an apple pie in the refrigerator. If she splits the pie equally between herself, Mark and Joaquin, what fraction of the pie will Kelly get? Express your answer as a common fraction.

Answer: (2/9)

Question:

How many six-character codes can be made using each of the characters A,B,C, 1,2 and 3 exactly once?

Answer: (720)


Question:

Michael needs to carry 78 boxes from the cafeteria to the gym. He carries 1 box on the first trip, 2 boxes on the second trip and on each trip after that, Michael carries one more box than he carried on his previous trip. After how many trips will Michael first have carried over half of the boxes?

Answer: (9)

At this point the hostess, Kelly jokingly said, Michael would have had his assistants carry the boxes so that is a ridiculous question! So boom on you!


Question:

During a certain week, Kelly ran 2.5 miles on each of the first 3 days and she ran 3 miles on each of the next 3 days. How many miles must she run on the seventh day to average 3 miles per day for the entire week?

Answer: (4.5)

"Did you get any right? Probably not. The hosts, Kelly Ripa and Michael lost 5-0."