Funny Pic

[Buffalobiian]

Am i missing something? it can be both 20 or 15 minutes depending how you cut the board piece right?

No.

Cutting a piece of board into two pieces takes 1 cut. Cutting the board into three takes 2 cuts. If it takes 10 minutes to perform one cut, then two would take 20 minutes.

The marker is dumb enough to think instead that "cutting something into 2 pieces takes 10 minutes. Therefore, that's 1pc per 5 minutes - and 3 pieces must take 15 minutes.

The marker would be right if the question was about cutting pieces off a block of wood - in which case the bulk block would not count as a piece.


edit: well, actually, I take that back.

Yes, it can be 15 depending on how you cut the wood, but that's stupid, since you don't define the method as the quickest possible one, then you can answer with anything you want and justify it.

A scenario to fit the above example could be: the original block was a square. It takes 5 minutes to cut from one edge to the center, and another 5 minutes to do one from another edge in order to cut out a quadrant. Then you only have to spend 5 minutes cutting out a protruding bit to create another piece..

[UChessmaster]

Take the fictional board and do a vertical cut in the middle, two pieces, 10 minutes, now take either piece and do an horizontal cut, 3 pieces, 15 minutes. I guess that`s how the teacher saw it, which is not necessarily wrong, and before someone comes trolling i never said the 20 minutes answer was wrong.

Yes, it can be 15 depending on how you cut the wood, but that's stupid, since you don't define the method as the quickest possible one, then you can answer with anything you want and justify it.

True that.

[Buffalobiian]

Take the fictional board and do a vertical cut in the middle, two pieces, 10 minutes, now take either piece and do an horizontal cut, 3 pieces, 15 minutes. I guess that`s how the teacher saw it, which is not necessarily wrong, and before someone comes trolling i never said the 20 minutes answer was wrong.

I edited my post while you were posting I think, but yes.

Your scenario assumes that the board is twice as long as it is wide btw, which isn't stated in the question.

Given the details of the question, I think it's pretty safe to say 20 is the only reasonable answer.