The Old techInterview Forum - 6 + 4 =9 how is it possible

6 + 4 =9 how is it possible

how this addition is possible

vivek
Friday, May 06, 2005

something goofy like

VI + IV = IX

Where the roman numerals are made up of matchsticks and the x is actually the V from VI and the upside down V from IV. The I is just two matchsticks .. one from the I in VI and one from the I in IV.

Michael Pryor
Fog Creek Software
Sunday, May 08, 2005

It is possible for very large values of 9.

Richard Platel
Monday, May 09, 2005

Ha! Richard's answer is way better.

Michael Pryor
Fog Creek Software
Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Can we say it is possible when one wrongly calculates the addition? :)

Neil Chang
Wednesday, May 11, 2005

It's possible if your Pentium chip is a beta-release version?

David Clayworth
Friday, May 13, 2005

it's kind of lame but all i can think is if that this would be result of a system that can only express values externally as rounded integers but the underlying values can maintain their true value

thus for example

5.6 + 3.6 = 9.2

gets expressed as

6 + 4 = 9

johnny bucyk
Friday, May 13, 2005

6 + 3 + 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3
may on a particular math-library result in 9.9999999999...
and rounded to integer is 9

Peter Miehle
Tuesday, May 24, 2005

A spin on johnny's answer is the baseball answer.

If you pitch 6 innings, but get 2 out in your seventh, that's 6 2/3. Pitch 4 innings and get 1 out in your fifth, that's 4 1/3. In total, you've pitched 9 innings.

It wouldn't be unreasonable to say you pitched 6 one day and 4 the next, though.

Andy
Thursday, May 26, 2005

only if there exists a wrong calculation, 6+4 could be equal to 10. why think so hard on an obvoius thing ;-)

atom
Sunday, May 29, 2005

typo:
only if there exists a wrong calculation, 6+4 could be equal to 9

atom
Sunday, May 29, 2005

Easy. You're using a number system other than the integers/naturals, and you've defined addition that way.

Math major
Tuesday, June 07, 2005

You've overloaded the + operator in a non-standard way.

David Clayworth
Tuesday, June 21, 2005