An elderly man wants a job, but the foreman won\u2019t hire him until he passes a little maths test:<\/p>\n
\u201cHere is your first question.\u201d The foreman says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout using numbers, represent the number nine?\u201d<\/p>\n
Without numbers?\u201d<\/p>\n
The old man says. \u201cThat\u2019s easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he proceeds to draw three trees.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d The boss asks.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you no brain? Tree plus tree plus tree makes nine.\u201d Says the old man.<\/p>\n
\u201cFair enough.\u201d Says the boss.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s your second question. Use the same rules, but this time the number is 99?\u201d<\/p>\n
The man stares into space for a while, then picks up the picture that he has just drawn and makes a smudge on each tree and hands it back.<\/p>\n
The boss scratches his head and says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow on earth do you get that to represent 99?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEach of the trees is dirty now. So, it\u2019s a dirty tree plus a dirty tree plus a dirty tree. That makes 99.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right, last question. Same rules again, but represent the number 100?\u201d<\/p>\n
The old man stares into space again; he then picks up the picture and makes a little mark at the base of each tree and hands it back.<\/p>\n
The boss looks at the man\u2019s picture.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou must be nuts if you think that represents a hundred?\u201d<\/p>\n
The old man leans forward and points to the marks at the base of each tree and whispers.<\/p>\n
\u201cA little dog came along and pooped by each tree. So now you got dirty tree and a turd, plus dirty tree and a turd, plus dirty tree and a turd, which makes 100.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An elderly man wants a job, but the foreman won\u2019t hire him until he passes a little maths test: \u201cHere is your first question.\u201d The foreman says. \u201cWithout using numbers, represent the number nine?\u201d Without numbers?\u201d The old man says. \u201cThat\u2019s easy.\u201d And he proceeds to draw three trees. \u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d The boss asks. \u201cHave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2718,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-random-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3635,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634\/revisions\/3635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}