OT: Kids like this one.

[Robatoy]

A woodworker near here passed away recently. When he died, he had 17 boards of Brazilian Rosewood.

In his will, he had left 1/2 of those boards to his oldest son, 1/3 to his middle son, and 1/9 to his youngest son. The family discussed/argued/fought over how to best split up the lumber. To no avail. No matter how hard they tried, they could not make the fractions work into the number 17, and nobody wanted to cut those boards.

The village idiot made a suggestion that worked. He suggested he'd lend them one of his boards which would make the total

1. The oldest son got 9 boards The middle son got 6 boards and the youngest got 2 boards.

9+6+2=17, and the Village idiot took his board back and walked off whistling and thinking who the idiots really were.

-------------------------- CAVEAT!!!! This was meant to be a cute little thing to share with your loved ones, NOT intended to be the fuel for a mathematical flame-war.

[Mike Marlow]

That's the difference between a woodworker and a machinist. For a woodworker, it all came out "close enough". A machinist would have labored over the precision.

[Josh]

To whom did the woodworker leave the remaining 1/18? That's the guy who got screwed.

Josh

[Greg O]

Converting the fractions to decimal you get,

17 x .5 =8.5 17 x .333 = 5.6 17 x .111 = 1.88 8.5+5.6+1.88=16 in round numbers. I wonder who the old man wanted the last board given to! Pretty simple to see that if you round the numbers up you end up with 17 boards, but that is not what the will stated! Greg

[Robert Galloway]

I'd say he intended the remainder to cover the inheritance tax but we all know 1/18th wouldn't be enough :-)

[George Shouse]

I'm not sure what the point of the story was. Dad can't add?

17/18 is close enough to 1 for a wood worker?

[Robatoy]

*sound of buzzer*

Nope.. that's not it.

[Guess who]

Not for the wannabe machinists who use micrometers to set their saw.

[gary in virginia]

Reminds me of the old one about the 3 men an the hotel bellman. Remember that one?

Gary

[Leon]

They all should be happy. The each got more than their allotted share.

[Robatoy]

That's why we luvs Leon. *G*

[Leuf]

What did the youngest son do to get so screwed?

Where did he find 17 identically sized pieces of rosewood? Don't tell me he bought them s4s!

And since he knew none of his kids appreciated his woodworking (remember, nobody wanted to cut the wood) he'd be a smart ass about it. Clearly he was a regular wreck poster.

-Leuf

[mac davis]

hey, we're talking about a group of folks who say 12/4 instead of 3"s... what do you expect from poor dad?

mac

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