From: "Hermann Kremer"
Subject: Re: My apologies to her majesty. Now how do I do this CRT problem....
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 19:57:34 +0200
Newsgroups: sci.math
Summary: [missing]
lemma_one@my-deja.com schrieb in Nachricht <8jeehr$e51$1@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>I pray the Queen of Mathematics forgive me my efrontery....
>
>That out of the way, today we went over the harder homework problems in
>class. One of the students volunteered to explain her solution to one of
>the hard Chinese Remainder Theorem problems in class--and she didn't use
>the Chinese Remainder Theorem to obtain her correct solution(!?!)--but
>rather a long chain of common sense and algebraic arguments. We ran out
>of time so the instructor didn't cover the generic approach to solving
>the problem, which I would like to know how to do, so that when I have
>to solve similar problems in the future (like when I actually take
>Number Theory next semester) I'll be able to look back on the methods of
>solving this problem.
>
>Also, I'm interested in references to the history of the Chinese
>Remainder Theorem and what form it was known in to the ancient Chinese.
>I can't find any decent explaination of this anywhere.
You may look at
http://www.math.sfu.ca/histmath/China/ChinaTimeLine.html
>Anyways, this is the problem:
>
>------
>One a desert island, five men and a monkey gather coconuts all day, then
>sleep. The first man awakens and decides to take his share. He divides
>the coconuts into five equal shares, with one coconut left over. He
>gives the extra one to the monkey, hides his share, and goes back to
>sleep. Later, the second man awakens and takes his fifth from the
>remaining pile; he too finds one extra and gives it to the monkey. Each
>of the remaining three men does likewise in turn. Find the minimum
>number of coconuts originally present.
IIRC, there has been a longer thread on the coconut problem ca 2 months ago
in this NG.
Try to find it by DejaNews.
Regards
Hermann
--
>-------
>
>Thank you very much for help with this.
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.