Shop Signboard Injury: 5 Person Injured

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The discussion revolves around a hypothetical scenario where five people (labeled a, b, c, d, e) are standing in line outside a shop when a sign falls, resulting in the deaths of a, c, and e, while b and d remain unharmed. Participants debate the identity of the shop, with suggestions primarily focusing on McDonald's and Walmart. One contributor claims to have conducted extensive mathematical analysis to support their conclusion, which raises skepticism from others regarding the feasibility of completing such a complex task in a short time frame. The conversation also includes humorous remarks about the nature of the problem and various theories about the shop's identity, including a fictional scenario involving a society targeting individuals based on their association with the number 153. Ultimately, while some participants lean towards McDonald's due to the shape of the sign resembling an "M," others suggest alternative stores like ACE Automotive, indicating a mix of logical reasoning and playful banter throughout the thread.
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Five person, labeled as: a, b, c, d, e, stands in line outside a shop under its huge signboard. It fell, and person a, c, e died, b and d were, however, inact.
Question: what shop is that?
 
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McDonalds
Wallmart
 
couldnt it be any store?
 
cdhotfire said:
couldnt it be any store?
No. Only McDonalds or Wallmart. I did the math.
 
You did the math. Okay...
 
Trust me. It was complicated; Took nearly 8 sheets of paper for the proof (college ruled). Thats a lot. I ran a discrete system analysis on it too, and Mathematica took about an hour to get to the answer.
 
Healey01 said:
Trust me. It was complicated; Took nearly 8 sheets of paper for the proof (college ruled). Thats a lot. I ran a discrete system analysis on it too, and Mathematica took about an hour to get to the answer.

8 sheets of paper huh?, you must write extremely quick. The post was first put up at 11:57 AM, and you awnsered at 12:18 PM. So you must be real quick at writing, so unless you can do the problem in 21 minutes, its pretty imposible. First of all you wouldn't have the full 21 minutes, because the poster posted the thread and you didnt read it right away so you must of looked at it from just browsing around, this means you have lost some time. Second you would have wasted time reading and writing your responce, + thinking. So in conclusion you must of have about 15 minutes to actually solve the problem. Which isn't that much time to write 8 sheets of paper.

Thank you, thank you very much.
:smile:
 
cdhotfire said:
8 sheets of paper huh?, you must write extremely quick. The post was first put up at 11:57 AM, and you awnsered at 12:18 PM. So you must be real quick at writing, so unless you can do the problem in 21 minutes, its pretty imposible. First of all you wouldn't have the full 21 minutes, because the poster posted the thread and you didnt read it right away so you must of looked at it from just browsing around, this means you have lost some time. Second you would have wasted time reading and writing your responce, + thinking. So in conclusion you must of have about 15 minutes to actually solve the problem. Which isn't that much time to write 8 sheets of paper.

Thank you, thank you very much.
:smile:

Still doesn't prove it's a lie :biggrin: However, the one hour of Mathematica run-time; Healey'll have to call in the time machines to help him out there ! :wink:
 
Well, 8 sheets of math really isn't that hard to do in under 20 minutes. What I meant was an hour of "single processor computing time" for mathematica. I wrote code for it that uses our cluster on the 6 allotted nodes I have, and it took 10 minutes, plus another 10 to write the code. Its like when you count "manhours" for people, this was "computing hours" for computers.

If you don't buy then then, um, different time zones?
 
  • #10
OldTee said:
Five person, labeled as: a, b, c, d, e, stands in line outside a shop under its huge signboard. It fell, and person a, c, e died, b and d were, however, inact.
Question: what shop is that?

#1. An automobile spare parts shop that sells alternators. We have one near my home called ACE Automotive...would that be it ?

#2. It's a shop owned by the Society that believes that man has not been to the moon, and the Lunar missions are all hoaxes. The society has a list of people that it has blackmarked as execution targets, and they programmed their store computer to identify these people and kill them. The store camera observes all passersby, log their data, and they are matched against several parameters to determine if they are targets. The computer then relays this target information to a servo-hydraulic feedback controlled mechanism which serves as a robotic assassin.

The computer was first installed on the day that the sign fell on a, e and c. They were however, not targets of the society. There was a bug in the program that lead to the computer noticing that persons numbered 1, 5, and 3 (a, e, and c respectively) were associated with the number 153, which you know, is an Armstrong Number (sum of cubes of digits = number. 1+125+27=153). So, it automatically associated these 3 innocent people with target #1 on the blacklist : Neil Armstrong. The rest is history !

#3. This is boring. The shape of the sign is like a W or an M (cursive). Don't ask me how I got this. It came from running Mathematica for several hours. So, are there any shops with such a sign ? I'm not sure...let's ask Mathematica again ! :biggrin:
 
  • #11
10 minutes to write code, 10 minutes to get awnser, gives you 20 minutes, and I am sure you didnt read this post the second it was posted so you would need a time machine like gokul said. :-p
 
  • #12
Gokul43201 said:
#3. This is boring. The shape of the sign is like a W or an M (cursive). Don't ask me how I got this. It came from running Mathematica for several hours. So, are there any shops with such a sign ? I'm not sure...let's ask Mathematica again ! :biggrin:

You might have to purchase the extra "things falling on people" package. Its about $349, ($319 with gov discount) for an individual site license.
 
  • #13
the time on this forum stays the same even if your on mars.
Gokul what was the point of that, lol. :smile:
 
  • #14
cdhotfire said:
10 minutes to write code, 10 minutes to get awnser, gives you 20 minutes, and I am sure you didnt read this post the second it was posted so you would need a time machine like gokul said. :-p

Actually I don't do any real work here at the labs, I just sit on this forum all day hitting F5.
 
  • #15
hahahhahhahahhaha, that's pretty sweet do you get paid, :smile: . Can i be your assistant or sometin. I want to sit at a lab getting paid for checking physics forums. :blushing:
 
  • #16
Anyways back to the point, these guys could of have been standing in different order from a b c d e, the post did not say they were standing in order, so...
 
  • #17
Ha. Actually I AM doing work at the same time. All of my simulations right now are liek this:

1 Work for an hour setting up runs.
2 Start runs.
3 10 minutes of doing nothing/ looking over code/ browsing this forum
4 Hour analysing results.
5 Realizing the keyfile had a typo in it/code had bug/ named somethign wrong
6 go to line 2.
7 Finished Result! unobtainable
 
  • #18
cdhotfire said:
Gokul what was the point of that

The point of what ? My 3 brilliant solutions ? :biggrin:
 
  • #19
I have figured it out The store is <insert name of store here> how could i be wrong?
 
  • #20
lmao, nice fizzz, your amazing how didnt i think of that sooner. Gj, you deserve a cookie. :wink:
 
  • #21
lol lots of interesting answer here..the one I had in mind is Macdonald, not sure if Walmart does the trick though, since the 'M' in their signboard doesn't possesses the artistic feature (cf [1] for a walmart signboard with folks standing below). Clearly, M in this signboard cannot produce as pronounced an effect as the former. However, a close inspection of the figure reveals that the W might do the trick. While a linear stability analysis of the object with a weak gravitational perturbation can give rise to a probability density distribution function of it killing people as desired, it is beyond the scope of this post.


[1] http://www.iolaregister.com/yellowpages/walmart.jpeg
 
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  • #22
This problem is a load of balls!

































It's a pawnbroker's.
 
  • #23
...
 
  • #24
I agree with Gokul. It is ACE. A, C, and E fell. If the sign fell, ACE would fall also. It is logical, but only relevant to those near or familiar with ACE automotive.
 
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