full detail 17 The Bedouin will old Bedouin died and left 17

full detail

17 The Bedouin will old Bedouin died and left 17 camels to his three sons. His will specified that the camels should go to his eldest son, 1 to his second son, and to his youngest son. sons could not see how to distribute the cameis without cutting some of them up, or selling them and dividing the money. which they did not want to do. So they went to a tribal elder for advice. The old man thought for a while and then said. \"I have 1 camel. I will add it to your 17 to make 18 camels. Now we shall divide them. The eldest son takes the camels, or 9. The second son takes 1. or 6. The youngest son\'s share is d, or 2. Because 9 6 2 17, there is 1 camel left over, so I get my camel back. How could it be that the tribal elder succeeded in solving a problem the sons (and probably you, too) thought was impossible?

Solution

total number of camel to be distributed = 17

Elder son should recieve 1/2 of total camel which is 17*(1/2)=8.5

which is practically impossible as camel can\'t be half.

same situation was with other sons too.

that\'s why it seed impossible to distribute camels.

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The tribal leader added 1 camel to make total 18 camels that made whole calculation easy.

Now it became possible to distribute camels to sons according to given conditions. Just because Tribal leader playded with numbers. He is still not actually distributing exact values because distribution is to be done from 17 not from 18 camels.

Althoug distributing 17 camels is practically not possible for given conditions so in that case a little compromise can be made like adding 1 camel.

17/2=8.5

17/3=5.66666666667

17/9=1.88888888889

if you see these values carefully and compare with distributed values then you can easily see how calculation got adjusted:

18/2=9 (this son recieved 0.5 more than expected)

18/3=6 (got approx 0.4 less)

18/9=2 (got approx 0.1 extra )