Help! - maths

[Clinton1]

A forum I am trying to get one has a secret question I can not get past.
How many days in February 1803 PLUS February 1716, now add -21, and take the square root.

I am so stumped!
Can anyone help?

[Fuzzie]

28+29-21=36
root(36)=6

[ian]

[cava]

[rwbuild]

The logic behind it is easy, it has to be a std 28 day February + a leap year to get a total that has a natural square root ie: 28 + 28 = 56 - 21 = 35, no natural sq rt
29 + 29 = 58 - 21 = 37, no natural sq rt

The nominated years are only to put you off track for confusions sake

(edit my bad maths)

Still no whole number natural sq root

[BobL]

question doesn't say anything a natural square root.

The logic behind it is easy, it has to be a std 28 day February + a leap year to get a total that has a natural square root ie: 28 + 28 = 56 - 21 = 55, no natural sq rt
29 + 29 = 58 - 21 = 57, no natural sq rt

Actually its 35, and 37 and of course they have square roots, 6.08276253029822...... and 5.91607978309962. . . . . . .

[A Duke]

Hi,
The years are not just to confuse, if the year is dividable by 4 it is a leap year. Not sure off hand when the modern calendar came about so could still be a trap.
Regards

[Bohdan]

1583 is the first full year of the Gregorian calendar. 1753 was the first full year in which the U.S. (then a British colony) began using the Gregorian calendar.

[derekcohen]

I'd say 6 as well. What are we missing, if at all?

And do you really want to be on a forum that cannot do maths as well as we can?

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Fuzzie]

And do you really want to be on a forum that cannot do maths as well as we can?

Clinton hasn't told us yet if 6 is indeed the correct answer. In any case I assume the question is to determine if the answerer is a human and not a bot; not specifically meant to trick and trap. I'd prefer to be on a forum where the humans predominate. Many algorithms do maths quicker and more accurately than I do, even though I sometimes think in reverse polish.

[ian]

Many algorithms do maths quicker and more accurately than I do, even though I sometimes think in reverse polish.

out of interest, when did you buy your first HP calculator?

[ian]

Hi,
The years are not just to confuse, if the year is dividable by 4 it is a leap year. Not sure off hand when the modern calendar came about so could still be a trap.
Regards

so to be really tricky, the question should have been...

How many days in February 1800 PLUS February 1716, now add -21, and take the square root.

[ian]

question doesn't say anything a natural square root.

its 35, and 37 and of course they have square roots, 6.08276253029822...... and 5.91607978309962. . . . . . .

but neither are particularly useful as a bot trap. where do you truncate the number ?

SQRT(35) = 5.9, or 5.92, or 5.916, etc. to a machine 5.91608 is not the same as 5.916080

[Chesand]

so to be really tricky, the question should have been...

How many days in February 1800 PLUS February 1716, now add -21, and take the square root.

The answer is still 6.

[Fuzzie]

out of interest, when did you buy your first HP calculator?

Never, I've always played with real computers.
My first introduction to reverse polish was in 1971 learning Fortran from McCraken's manual.
I think I wrote my own first usable RP calculator program in about 1981 on a Prime computer.