A bunch of friends went to the sports bar and got a group rate on the drinks: $5/glass for wine, $2/glass for beer, and $1/glass for water. When we left, the waiter asked me to sort out the bill. There was enough uncertainty in what people remembered that I could not be precise. So we happily just threw in enough to cover the bill, which came to $293 and we went home.
But it got me thinking. None of us had multiple glasses of the same beverage. The waiter said 106 glasses were used, once each. 18 of us did not drink water. 39 people had wine. I was certain that 9 of us were teetotalers. If I had known the sizes of just three classes of drinkers I could have figured out the bill, as it was, I could not.
But it did occur to me that if those who drank beer and water but not wine were as many as possible, and if those who drank only wine were half as many as that, I could say the smallest number of us who drank all three. Can you?
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bonanova
A bunch of friends went to the sports bar and got a group rate on the drinks: $5/glass for wine, $2/glass for beer, and $1/glass for water. When we left, the waiter asked me to sort out the bill. There was enough uncertainty in what people remembered that I could not be precise. So we happily just threw in enough to cover the bill, which came to $293 and we went home.
But it got me thinking. None of us had multiple glasses of the same beverage. The waiter said 106 glasses were used, once each. 18 of us did not drink water. 39 people had wine. I was certain that 9 of us were teetotalers. If I had known the sizes of just three classes of drinkers I could have figured out the bill, as it was, I could not.
But it did occur to me that if those who drank beer and water but not wine were as many as possible, and if those who drank only wine were half as many as that, I could say the smallest number of us who drank all three. Can you?
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