A simple problem that led us to Ramanujan’s work on Integer Partitioning

September 12th, 2010 admin

Raghu, my cousin, sent me an email with the following problem a few months ago.

Question

Manish was on his way to an interview. On the way, he encountered his long lost cousin, Vijay, whom he hadn’t met in more than a decade. They started catching up on lost time. Manish learned that Vijay had 3 sons. When he asked about their ages, Vijay replied, “You’re going for an interview, right? Consider this a trial question. Figure out their ages from this: The product of the ages of my three sons is 36.” To this, Manish grumbled that he needed more information. Vijay, then, pointed to a sign board across the street that displayed the address of the area and said that the sum of the ages of his three children was equal to the last two digits of the pin code (zip code) of that area. Manish demanded still more information. Finally, Vijay said, “My eldest son wore a black shirt today. This is all I can tell you.”

What were the ages of the three children? Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Family, Tidbits, Tutorials | 2 Comments »

Ammamma

September 1st, 2010 admin

“Ammamma…Boost…”, I would ask her for a hot malt beverage, as she would get busy in her tiny kitchen after her short afternoon nap on the hard concrete floor, with a strategically placed pillow for her head. Ammamma means maternal grandmother in my mother tongue, Telugu. Amma is mom, and ammamma is, literally, momom. She would then get busy preparing the late afternoon coffees for the elders, starting with the eldest – Tatagaru, and Boost for the kids. Although I mostly saw her only over summer holidays, this particular aspect of her routine was probably eternal. In fact, all her routines were seemingly eternal yet inexplicably fresh every time. She would hunker down at the old, grime-laden, two-burner gas stove sitting on the floor of her tiny kitchen and with what seemed like an impossibly tiny collection of utensils, groceries and gadgets, came up with the most exquisite of dishes. Simple fare it always was, and she was not a great cook, but the taste of her cooking was earthy and heavenly. Vegetables of all manner were shallow fried. Coffee and Boost was not served before being poured several times, alternating between two tumblers to generate froth (steamed milk). “Boost tagutawa, Kishtappa, aain?”, she would ask. The “aain?” was kind of like Amitabh Bachchan’s pan-laden mouth confirming something – “aain?”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Events, Family | 11 Comments »