As you last recall…
We were able to find your
age using your cell phone number.
Step 1: Take the last
two digits of your cell number
Step 2: ×2
Step 3: +5
Step 4 ×50
Step 5: +1764
Step 6: Subtract your
birth year (example:1965)
You will get 4 digits.
- The first two digits will be the cell numbers.
- The next two digits will
be your age.
How can it be so?
Answer
below…
******************************************************************************************************
I found this intriguing when
I stumbled upon it since I do some analytical problem solving for a
living. I employed some of the methods
we use at work when faced with a perplexing situation. There is also a Faith
& Reason connection in here somewhere, so here we go…
1. Identify base premise or premises
For this case:
Your cell phone number
and your age correlate. This should NOT
be happening!
2. Separate &
clarify the situation
Breakdown the situation into specific/actionable
elements to minimize/alleviate:
Over-generalizations
Assumed cause-effect relationships
Reality confusion
Rationality overloaded by feelings
Being overwhelmed by the scope of the problem
3. Make thinking
“visible”
Since this is about numbers and variables, knowledge
and experience with algebra can be used to simultaneously breakdown the problem
and make the thinking visible.
x = last two digits of cell #
y = your birth year
z = your age this year
(2x+5)50 + 1764 - y = 100x + z
100x + 250 + 1764 - y = 100x + z
100x + 2014 - y = 100x + z
4. Sort relevant data from irrelevant data
“100x” is irrelevant because they cancel out
in the equation above, so "x” is also irrelevant.
We are left
with:
2014 - y = z
5. Track assumptions
Is “2014” just the current year used to
calculate your age?
6. Verify assumptions
Pretend it's the year 2024 (you are 10 years
older) and re-try the riddle. It doesn't work.
7. Form conclusions
-
It can be any number.
-
It is not used to find your age.
-
Your cell number is in the riddle to freak you out.
Call the current year “c”
c - y = z
or
current year - birth year = age
No concern here.
What kind of faith &
reason connection can we make from all this? Perhaps it’s that we cannot reduce
the reality around us to only surface observations, or only one way of looking at things. This may
not sound very “Catholic” on the surface, but I think it is, as long as we deal
with reality in its proper context.
Much in the riddle was
invisible to us in the beginning which made it unsettling. It seems your age
just “magically” appeared by itself out of some arbitrary numbers and steps,
but things became visible with some time, effort and a rational approach that
brought clarity and deeper understanding.
Far from being something
born of chance, we see that there must have been a mind behind it all, and a very
clever mind at that. All I did was discover and sort facts that were already there, and
think about what was already thought of before. In the end we found the riddle to be “intelligible”, which
ultimately implies “intelligence”. We don’t know how or why the riddler thought
of this, but we do know that it requires thinking.
I think the same can be
said about the riddle of our “being”, about the course of our lives, about mankind
as evolutionary “overkill” (in terms of surviving & reproducing), about how
our planet and the entire universe just happened to “magically” appear and “calculate”
itself in our favor. Intellectual honesty tells us that it’s all beyond what mindlessness
can do. As Albert Einstein once said, “The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it is
comprehensible”.
Going beyond just deism,
when we grow in our catholic faith, we grow in the right perception of all reality, as
we say in our creed, of all things visible
AND invisible.
“…when we reflect on ourselves as knowers, it is clear that we are
pattern-seeking and pattern-loving creatures, creatures curiously made to be
curious amidst an order curiously
designed to be sought.”
― From “A Meaningful World” by Benjamin Wiker & Jonathan Witt
