Sesame Street Moment Answer(s)

[vakkotaur]

Yesterday's post asked which did not belong:

                    _______
                   |   |   |
                   | 1 | 2 |
                   |___|___|
                   |   |   |
                   | 3 | 4 |
                   |___|___|

And I admitted that there was likely more than one answer.

First, it's not the box, boxes, a line, or lines. Those are simply the closest I could easily manage with text to show the divided-into-fourths picture.

I had not thought of the number of pen-strokes needed to write the characters, which would result in 4 being the oddball. But as the comments show, that is not a sure thing.

I had thought of the factorability argument: Only 4 can be factored into primes that do not include itself. That may seem a bit weaselly, but it does avoid the argument over if 1 is considered or defined to be prime.

Strangely, I hadn't thought of the sequence 1, 2, 4 with each being double the previous digit, thus making 3 the oddball.

I have to admit to a bit of obfuscation, as I listed the numbers as 1, 2, 3, and 4 rather than as one, two, three, and four. Granted, the same arguments for distinction would apply. But perhaps a linguistic idea rather than a mathematical idea would be a bit more likely.

As I had originally thought of this, the unique number was three. Why? Because the names of other numbers have homonyms, at least in english. One has won. Two has to and too. Four has for and fore. But three is just three. Not that this answer is any more valid than the others.

Comments

[ginafae.livejournal.com]

Wow. All I came up with was 4 because it's not a prime.

Hrm. I am apparantly not as smart as I like to think. *biggrin*

Here's another way

[tenax.livejournal.com]

4 is the odd man out, as Billie huskies are unable to ever count that high. As described under the definition for "free," Billies would count "One.. spoo.. free.. Free spoo? Yay!" Then, the whole puzzle would devolve into a mess of huskie particles, the spoo that binds the universe, and other sillyness.



You should be so lucky to have your planet scheduled for demolition for a hyperspace bypass.



The sense for this comment? Non sense.

Is 1 a prime?

[(Anonymous)]

One of the few things I remember from algebra is that in a ring, units (things with multiplicative inverses) aren't considered prime. If 1 were prime, that would wreck the Unique Factorization Theorem, because you could always throw in 1**whatever. See http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/notes/faq/one.html for details.

foolscap