[ExI] how far can she go?

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 11:07 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

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> It was a time joke, on me.  In an offline discussion I was relating a
> story that happened to me 35 years ago, and I just now got it.  It was an
> IQ test question, not multiple choice, it was administered by a live
> psychologist.
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> A hiker walks north 4 km, turns and walks east 3 km.  How far is the hiker
> from the starting point?
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> Simple question, answered instantly, 5 km.  But then I realized, the hiker
> could start 4+3/2pi km from the north pole.  Then she could turn east, walk
> a full circle always walking east for 3 km and end up right where she
> turned east, 4 km from where she started.  As far as I know, there is no
> way on flat ground she could end up any closer than 4 km.
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> So here’s the really cool question: assuming the north pole trick, what is
> the farthest she could end up from the start?
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> It’s a crazy difficult answer to what looks like an easy question.  All
> this time, a cool calculation was waiting for me to discover it.
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> If you give up, I found the answer.  If I did it right, it isn’t an
> integer or an integer multiple of pi.  Try it first before you ask what I
> got, good luck.
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The furthest distance I can figure is 4+(6/pi).

-Kelly
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