I have this friend?

Question

There's a friend of mine, I think he's a genius, I mean he studies day and night and has these wierd habits like writing math equations everywhere and always coming up with wierd ideas, he gets top marks in math and the sciences, but one day I asked him to prove one of the circle theorems in GCSE math which is real easy I proved simply, but he can't seem to prove it. What do you think, is he pretending or is his intelligence just not compatible with things like that?

Answer 1

Sometimes geniuses can overlook the simple solutions.

I once gave the following problem to someone:

You have a bicycle and a car starting at a distance 120 miles apart. There is a bee on the handlebars of the bicycle.

They all start at the same moment with the following speeds:
bicycle = 10 mph
car = 50 mph
bee = 70 mph

The bee flies from the bicycle to wherever the car is at this point, then instantly turns around and flies back to wherever the bicycle is, then turns around and flies back to the car, etc.

The question is, at the point when they all meet, how far has the bee flown.

This person I asked was a math genius and must have spent quite some time with infinite decreasing series, calculus and the like trying to figure out the distance the bee flew... but you and I know the answer is much simpler.

Do you know how far the bee flew?

I have another story about geniuses... this was apparently the scene at a Mensa dinner. At one table several Mensa members were sitting down and when they went to pour out the salt and pepper, they noticed that the pepper shaker had the bigger holes, compared to the salt shaker.

Being geniuses, they immediately realized that the salt and the pepper were in the incorrect shakers, so one guy carefully took his dinner napkin and fashioned it into a cone. The second guy took the salt and poured it into this cone. The third guy carefully cleaned out any residual salt and then poured the pepper into the correct shaker. He also cleaned out the first shaker to remove any residual pepper.

Finally, the first two geniuses let the salt pour out of the bottom of the napkin cone, back into the empty shaker. Smiling smuggly, the group looked around and hoped others had seen their intelligent solution to the problem.

A waitress who was not part of the Mensa group had followed this whole scenaro came over and said, "I may not be a member of Mensa, but wouldn't it have been easier just to switch the tops?"

Answer 2

If he's getting top marks in math and sciences, I'd say he's probably pretty smart, not necessarily a genius.
What you describe about him, always thinking about math and science and coming up with weird ideas sounds a little like me. I'm not pretending anything, and I'm not a genius, it's the way I am. But I know some people think I'm super smart because of my behavior. I tell them I'm not and they think I'm even smarter than they supposed.
Ultimately, what difference does it make to you?

Answer 3

bull this er by the sound of it.... ask him to find the error in this, are you ready:

a = b
a.a = a.b (do the same thing both sides, agree?
a^2 - b^2 = ab -b^2 (do the same thing both sides, agree?)
so
(a+b)(a-b)=b(a-b) (do the same thing both sides, agree?)
so
a+b = b
but as
a=b then
b+b=b
2b=b divide by b (do the same thing both sides, agree?)
2=1 which obvioulsy is wrong but why?

if he gets it in under 1 hour he is OK. if you get it before him, dump him.
Let me know

Answer 4

Try asking him a cople pf questions

Answer 5

i guess he is like a cramming parrot..who mugs everything...