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Tuesday, February 11, 2003 - 09:06 AM
 A friend of mine e-mailed this to me a long time ago. Give it try, it's pretty neat. The rules are simple: just scroll down slowly.
FOLLOW THE RULES AND SCROLL DOWN REALLY SLOWLY AND DON'T CHEAT!!!!
SCROLL DOWN SLOWLY !!!!!!!!!!
SCROLL DOWN SLOWLY !!!!!!!!!!
SCROLL DOWN SLOWLY !!!!!!!!!!
Try this and you will be amazed! Don't look ahead!
Just do it step by step. Go....
DO NOT SKIP AHEAD.
Read this message ONE LINE AT A TIME and just do what it says. You will be glad you did.
1) pick a number from 1-9
2) subtract 5
3) multiply by 3
4) square the number (multiply by the same number -- not square root; and yes, you can square 0. It equals 0)
5) add the digits until you get only one digit (i.e. 64=6+4=10= 1+0=1)
6) if the number is less than 5, add five. Otherwise subtract 4.
7) multiply by 2
8) subtract 6
9) map the digit to a letter in the alphabet 1=A, 2=B, 3=C, etc...
10) pick a name of a European country that begins with that letter
11) take the second letter in the country name and think of a mammal that begins with that letter
12) think of the color of that mammal
(keep scrolling)
DO NOT SCROLL DOWN UNTIL YOU HAVE DONE ALL OF THE ABOVE
Here it comes, NO CHEATING or you may be sorry.
You have a gray elephant from Denmark.
Or at least you probably have a gray elephant from Denmark. When most of us are asked to name an animal that starts with the letter E, we usually think of "Elephants." But there are those who will name Elk and Ermines (a type of weasel) instead.
So why does this work? Well, it revolves around the fact that squaring a multiple of 3 produces a number which has digits that sum to 9. For examply, squaring 12 (a multiple of 3) equals 144. The digits 1, 4, and 4 sum to 9 (1+4+4=9). Using this piece of information, you can see that steps 3 and 4 above always ensure you have a number whose digits sum to 9 before you head into step 5.
So we pick any number from 1 to 9 in step 1. In step 2 we make our squaring manageable by subtracting 5. This ensures our range is always -4 to 4, which thus ensures we'll never square a number larger than 12. In step 3 we make our number a multiple of 3. In step 4 we square to get a number whose digits sum to 9 (step 5).
"But wait! I picked 5 in step 1 and I ended up with 0. I can't continue!" Nonsense. 0 squared is 0. And in case you have 0 heading into step 6, we have a special clause just for you: "if the number is less than 5, add five." The only time you'd ever need that step is if you picked 5 in step 1. Otherwise you always have 9 from which you subtract 4 to get 5.
Steps 7 and 8 simply get you to the number 4. From there, chance and human predictability take over, where most people do indeed pick Elephants.
If you like CuriousMath.com, here's a book you'll love:
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Comments
cute, math is cute...
I did this test just for curiosity, but I have to say that it left me open-mouthed! I liked it so much I sent it to all of my friends by e-mail! :-)
it was a really cool trick. i forwarded it to my friends and they enjoyd it.
Very nice. However, Denmark is not the only nation that begins with a "D." Djibouti, a country in the horn of Africa, also begins with D. Therefore, someone could pick an animal such as a Jaguar, or Jackrabbit.
It was fun! But when i saw the answer, it didnt match mine. I chose Denmark but i thought of a brown eagle? :(
Djibouti is not a European country, however, and it specifies to choose a European country. Just a thought...
It had to be a European country.
Dear Lord..you forget that Djibouti is not a european country.and the test was saying about a european one.
dude, the country had to be from Europe not africa so therefor the only answer would be Denmark
THIS IS COOL, but I thought elephants were brown? I know some are gray.
tried it in dutch (so the mammal is olifant, grijs) and even without Denmark, the result was the grey elephant
Deutschland.. so I ended up with e too, and I knew that You wanted elephant because it came to my mind instantly, from there on i knew what this would be like ^^....
Wow!?!?! I really got the hang of it and i'm sure it would be a great help for me because i'm a member of a special program in math....... THANKS, WHOEVER YOU ARE!!!!!
This is clever! And something in math I can understand and appreciate. A lot of it means nothing to my poor brain - math and I agreed not to bother each other for most of my life! When it comes to algebra etc - forget it ! The despair of math teachers when at college.!
At first I thought it was one of those cheap tricks where you always endup with a particular number or something. It did in way, but with the other stuff, it threw me off track. Nice one. Could you actually find a probability for this event? I mean show it mathematically?
Ha! it really kindled my curiosity but i ended up with a black owl of Dominican Republic :)
Here is another way to wind up with 9. Pick a 2 digit number. Add the 2 digits and subtract their sum from the original number. Add the digits of the result. This will always be 9.
This one is a marvelous one that combines Math with Psychology. Kudos to the person who posted this.
this is really fun. though it only works on simple and straitfoward people. more random people such as me might wind up as emu or earthworm as an answer. great trick though :)
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