Thursday, January 12, 2006

do i just expect too much?

watching "who wants to be a millionaire?" while i ate my lunch just now, the following $8000 question just came up:

of the numbers from 2 to 10, how many are prime?
A: 2
B: 3
C: 4
D: 5

the contestant looked distressed, then took a poll of the audience... showing both the audience poll and an AOL poll, the correct answer and one other were fairly comparably high, and the other two choices each had a 10-15% following.

then, the contestant admitted he was leaning towards one of the less popular answers, so he phoned a friend who voted for a wrong answer but said he was very confident that he was right.

i was amazed. to me that's a really easy question, but then again, i'm a math person.

so my question to you all is -- do you know the answer? how hard was it for you? (HINT: leave me comments on this post!!! :P)

the end. :P
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4 comments:

~ruthie said...

i think it's 5, right? prime numbers are the ones that can only be divided by one and itself. of course, if i'm wrong, i'll look like a big doofus for posting it publicly.

2:06 PM
lara =) said...

prime numbers ARE numbers only divisible by one and themselves... with that definition, which numbers between 2 and 10 are prime then?

4:19 PM
~ruthie said...

letter d, or 5 numbers are prime. maybe i did it wrong. i counted 2, 3, 5, 7...oh, wait, i counted 9 the first time...was on a roll with the odd numbers. :) well, i guess letter c, or 4 numbers are prime?

5:31 PM
lara =) said...

4 numbers are prime, and you're right: they are 2,3,5,7... but between both of your comments i guess i see better where B and D were coming from.... i still don't get where A came from at all.

2 IS prime... it's the only even prime. it's 1 that may or may not be prime depending on how you define prime, but the consensus among math people leans more towards saying 1 is not prime for various other reasons.

9:48 PM

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