Jack and Jill were racing, but it was no contest. Jack beat Jill by 10 yards on a 100 yard course. Jill suggested that for the second race, Jack should start 10 yards behind the starting line. Presuming they run the same speed, who wins this race, and how long before Amanda Marcotte writes a column about it?
8 thoughts on “Wednesday Brain Teaser 12-12-12”
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graph paper diaries 
Jack beats Jill by a yard, or about 0.1 – 0.2 second. they are, after all, tied with ten yards to go, and he's faster.
Amanda Marcotte will write that column before the race takes place, after merely hearing about it.
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It's a tie. Amanda Marcotte writes a column about the race before it begins stating that Jack should have a handicap of 20 yards because he's not only a faster runner but also a male.
Wait… add another 10 yards to Jack's handicap because he's running downhill (male privilege, ya know?) while Jill is running uphill. In heels. With a uterus.
Or… IOW — I dunno. I opened a bottle of wine tonight. What color is Jack's shirt?
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I'm more interested to see the equation.
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It's the color of PATRIARCHY.
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For Jack and Jill or Amanda?
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The Equation of the Unified Field Theory of Fictional Characters running a Fictional Trackmeet with Handicaps.
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Congratulations! Right answer for the race.
Unfortunately you missed half of the Marcotte answer. She will write one before the race, and another one after discussing how it was even worse than we all realized.
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Let's see….
if we take x to be the track, y to be the handicap, z to be the fictional factor
then we get
Time = (x+y)^z
BUT that doesn't take in to account any social commentary so we have to have a = bias factor for men b = bias factor for women c = generalized outrage
we now have
Feelings = Time – a + (b*c)
There you go. Simple.
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