Kit
Posts:
1
Registered:
12/10/04
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Re: Is a rectangle a square?
Posted:
Sep 28, 2004 5:21 AM
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Pamela Paramour wrote:
>Is a square a rectangle? ...
> If you refer to Webster, ...
Here is a nice story realy happend in german tv, sorry for my bad
english.
In the german quiz-show "Wer wird Millionär" (Who becomes a
millionaire) from January, 31 2003 the 8000-Euro question was:
Every rectangle is:
(a) a rhombus
(b) a square
(c) a trapezoid
(d) a parallelogram.
In this show _allways_ exactly one answer is (has to be) correct.
The candidate was so confused, she didn't know if c or d is thw right
answer, so she skipped the question and went home (with "just" 4000
Euro). In the following days the broadcast station got tons of mails,
letters and phone calls. Nearly all "mathematicians" regarded c _and_
d as correct. The broadcast station told, that they looked up in three
different encyclopaedias, all three saying that trapezoids have only
one pair of parallel sides. Taking this definition only d is correct.
That's the problem. Who is right: More than 90 percent of the
mathematicians saying a parallelogram is also an trapezoid or three
encyclopeadias saying the opposite?
The Solomonian solution. In the next week the candidate got a "new"
8000-Euro-question.
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