MIT Math Graduate’s Daughter’s Age
This is a real Tough one even i could not crack it easily… Basically you have to use maths to solve this, while I was trying to use logic 😉 That is a hint by the way.
The Riddle is as below;
Two MIT math grads bump into each other at Fairway on the upper west side. They haven’t seen each other in over 20 years.
The first grad says to the second: “how have you been?”
Second: “great! i got married and i have three daughters now”
First: “really? how old are they?”
Second: “well, the product of their ages is 72, and the sum of their ages is the same as the number on that building over there..”
First: “right, ok.. oh wait.. hmm, i still don’t know”
Second: “oh sorry, the oldest one just started to play the piano”
First: “wonderful! my oldest is the same age!”
How old are the daughters ?
So were you able to solve the riddle? Leave your answers in the comment section below.
You can check if your answer is correct by clicking on show answer below. If you get the right answer, please do share the riddle with your friends and family on WhatsApp, Facebook and other social networking sites.
Answer:
The only thing that we know from their conversation is that there are 3 daughters whose ages multiply to 72. Let’s look at the possibilities. We will list down all the possible multiplication of 3 numbers that lead to the result 72
Ages: Sum of ages:
1 1 72 74
1 2 36 39
1 3 24 28
1 4 18 23
1 6 12 19
1 8 9 18
2 2 18 22
2 3 12 17
2 4 9 15
2 6 6 14
3 3 8 14
3 4 6 13
After looking at the building number the second man still can’t figure out what their ages are, so that means that the MIT grad cannot conclude the correct ages, meaning that the sum of the ages (or building number) must be 14, since that is the only sum that has more than one possibility. Finally the man finds out from the other that there is an oldest daughter. That rules out the “2 6 6″ possibility since the two oldest would be twins.