How many times can you subtract 3 from 39?

Question

The first person to give the right answer gets the points.

Wow! I was expecting more people to fail that question. I'll have to wait for 4 hours before dishing the points out to Frog Five - who was to first to give the correct answer of once.

For those who want a challenge (without the points this time):

The number of dresses owned by Yvonne is the same number owned by Lulu divided by the number owned by Irene.

Lulu has forty-two dresses and would own eight times as many as Irene if Lulu had fourteen more.

How many dresses does Yvonne have?

Answer 1

once

Answer 2

I know that the first question has already been answered, but I may aswell say it anyway: once.

Yvonne owns 6 dresses, my working is shown below:

The number of dresses owned by Yvonne is the same number owned by Lulu divided by the number owned by Irene.
Lulu has forty-two dresses and would own eight times as many as Irene if Lulu had fourteen more.
So therefore, y = l/i
y = 42/i
We need to work out i, the number of dresses Irene has, to continue. It says in the question that Lulu would own eight times as many as Irene if Lulu had fourteen more.
So now we add 14 to 42, to get 56. 56/8 = 7.
So i = 7.
So y = 42/7
y = 6.
Yvonne owns 6 dresses.

P.S. You call that a challenge?

Answer 3

12

Answer 4

13

Answer 5

13

Answer 6

13 times

Answer 7

My daughter is being taught, like my Mum taught me, to relate the maths to the reality. If you had 39 cans of beer and 2 friends, would you a) get very drunk on 13 rounds or b) say after 1 round "Go Home; I've only got 36 cans left"? a) of course. Now we have the principle, let us apply it: 39, just a number, can have an infinite number of 3's taken off it to make a negative infinity. 39, a count, can have 13 3's taken off it.

Answer 8

Several answers to this:-

39-3= 36, 39-3=36 - I can do this as many times as you want

39-3=36 - once because it is not 36 any more

13 times because 3*13 = 39

Its because of these anomalies in human logic that it is difficult to get computers to think for themselves :o)

Answer 9

Once and only once.
39 - 3 = 36 that's it
If you say 36 - 3, you are no longer subtracting from 39 but from 36.
You can say 39 -3 -3 -3 -3 to infinity.

Answer 10

apart from the obvious answer of once, negative numbers exist too so off you go to infinity, Lulu has 42 dresses, other girl (forgot her name) has 7 (42+14)/8 so yvonne has 6,

Answer 11

i like to subtract 3 from 39 when I wake up in the morning usually. I take my abacus and put 39 on it. Next I subtract 3. If I'm feelin really frisky I reset it to 39 and do it again!!!