this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Lord of the memes
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The Lord of the rings memes communitiy on Lemmy. Share memes about Lord of the rings and be respectful.
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What if he'd hoped for 18000 spears? The total number of spears hoped for isnt stated, therefore we cannot assume that 6001 is exactly half of the total.
In this instance we can tell it's 6001 though.
Correct, all we can deduce is the bounds:
Let x be the number of spears hoped for.
6000 < x/2 < 6002
12000 < x < 12004
Edit: fixed error
Less than half and more than half imply strict inequality, so 6000 < x/2 < 6002, so 12001 <= x <= 12003
You're absolutely correct, it should be "<". Since he wished for such an odd number, I wouldn't constrain x to integers though. Maybe he wished for "more than twelve thousand spears"?
Why would you need to assume? If 6000<50% AND 6002>50%, he wishes for 12002 spears.
Edit: dammit, that's a lot of spears.
You forgot a zero, but yeah. Also I think they're talking about the movie, not the meme. In the context of the meme we can safely assume he meant 12,002 spears. (Let's not assume fractional spears are a thing.)
They are a thing, but I don't think anyone is hoping for those.
If it's the pointy end it could still be useful though
Because the number you're reasoning about is the number of spears he wished for, not half the number he wished for, so mathematically, the logic holds for 3 different possible wished for integer values.
To arrive at precisely 12002 you need to make a further assumption which nobody has explained so far.
Also, a minor point, but that he wished for an integer number of spears is another assumption. Albeit a very reasonable seeming one, it's an assumption none the less. He could have wished for 12 thousand and π spears, for example. And no, I have no idea what you'd do with that ~14% of a spear.
If this were an SAT question, and upvotes correlated to what people were answering, well, the majority got this question wrong.
1201, 1202, or 1203 spears.
They don't think it be like it is, but it do.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anywhere between 6000.5 and 6001.5 could be exactly half the number of spears he was hoping for assuming he's hoping for whole spears.
Imagine being the guy with half a spear
I sure hope he has the pointy half