So, Get Off Your Ath, Lets Do Some Math!

* Disclaimer: Excuse the Mormon cussing in the title *

I had my first teaching experience yesterday! At the end of my Fundamentals of Math class our teacher told us about a problem one of my fellow students had come upon while taking one of our reviews tests online. He told us that this student couldn't figure it out and that he didn't remember teaching anything about it in class and he didn't remember seeing anything in the book that taught this concept. I, too, came upon this question and felt it was one of the easier problems. And, further more, he had taught this concept and it was in the book, as well.

And, I'm paraphrasing, it said:

All libraries have between 50 and 250 books. How many libraries will you have to visit to find that at least two of those libraries will have the same number of book?

Can you get it?

Since this is Fundamentals of Math, we have been asked to solve these problems like a 3rd - 7th grader would. We can draw pictures, draw a table, guess and check, etc. I drew a table. (I hope BlogSpot keeps my table fairly correct)

Books in the Library: Libraries visited:
50 1
51 2
52 3
53 4
. .
. .
. .
250 201

Assuming, and you have to assume this, that you went to 201 libraries and each one had a different number of books. The first library you visited at 50 books, the second library you visited had 51 books, the 201st library you visited at 250. That would mean that the 202nd library you visited HAD to have the same number of books on one of the previous.

Answer: 202