24 September 2008

Richard wants to know...

My friend Richard wants you to waste a small amount of your time on the following ridiculous question. (Why he can't post to his own blog is a good question, but I'm guessing Jamie does the posting...). Be sure you craft your OWN answer before looking in the comments at everyone else's.

"What are the 2nd-to-last 4 digits of the sequence: 123456789."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The last four digits are 6789, so the second to last four digits are 5678.

Because that is straightforward, I am probably wrong. Well done Richard.

Unknown said...

Unless you take out 6789 as the last four digits...so the sequence you have left is 12345...which makes 2345 the 2nd-to-last 4 digits in that sequence.

I'm probably making it too complicated :)

Richard said...

Finally, a vote for 5678! Who is the clever "Seth" character?

Craig West said...

"Second to the last four" implies a set of four digits. If "second to last" means "next to last" then the answer is 2345. I agree with Jaydee.

Anonymous said...

"What are the 2nd-to-last 4 digits of the sequence: 123456789."

The question asks for 4 digit groupings. Those are (in order) 1234, 2345, 3456, 4567, 5678, 6789.
The last 4 digits are 6789.
The 2nd-to-last is then the set preceding the last. The group that precedes 6789 is 5678.

"2nd-to-last 4" rather than "2nd-to-*the*-last four" makes 5678 the more correct answer.

I'm one of Christine's graduate students by the way. And other graduate students, both male and female, have sided with me :)

Christine said...

Who are these "other graduate students"?