Clinking Wineglasses

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

Suppose you have good friends seated around the dinner table who wish to toast one another's good health by clinking wineglasses. How many "clinks" will you hear? Each of the diners clinks glasses with his or her companions. You might at first think there would be clinks. But if you listen carefully—turn your computer's sound on—you will realize that this counts each clink twice, once for each clinkee. Dividing by 2 gives the correct number of clinks: .

Contributed by: S. M. Blinder (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


Snapshots


Details

Reference: S. M. Blinder, Guide to Essential Math, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2008 pp. 47–48.



Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send