Читать книгу Post-Impressions: An Irresponsible Chronicle - Strunsky Simeon - Страница 18

1. A ship carrying 800 passengers and crew is in collision off the banks of Newfoundland, and 700 are saved. Describe the method by which the Evening Journal computes 400 souls lost.

2. The salary of a police lieutenant is about $2,500 a year. At what rate of interest must this sum be invested to produce a million dollars' worth of real estate in ten years?

3. 2+2=4. Show this to be true otherwise than by writing a four-act play with its principal scene laid in a house of ill fame.

4. The loss to the nation from disease has been estimated at $200,000,000 a year. Show the profit that would accrue to the nation from abolishing every form of disease after deducting the cost of maintaining the dependent widows and orphans of 50,000 doctors who have starved to death.

5. In a certain gubernatorial campaign several disinterested gentlemen contributed $10,000 each to the campaign fund; yet the total of campaign contributions was a little over $5,000. Explain this.

6. If you were called upon to build a bridge to the moon, which would you rather use, the total number of postage stamps on rejected magazine contributions laid end to end, or the total number of automobiles shipped from Detroit placed end to end?

7. In a recent article on mortality statistics in the World, the writer omitted to divide his average death rate by 2. Was his argument, because of that, two times as convincing or only half as convincing?

8. Describe the modifications in the laws of arithmetic introduced by Mr. Thomas W. Lawson.