🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3V2SB7F6@cc.swarthmore.edu> ivens@forum.swarthmore.edu (Bernie Ivens) writes:
>A farmer sells eggs. To the first customer he sells one half of his eggs
>plus half of an egg.  To the second customer he sells one half of his
>remaining eggs plus half of an egg.  He continues to do this for a total
>of 6 customers. At this point he is out of eggs.  How many eggs did he
>start with?

Nice iteration problem!  Thanks for sharing it.  Here's its inverse
(which turns out to be much simpler!):

A chicken lays eggs.  On the first day, she lays a single egg.
On the following days, she lays twice as many eggs as she did
the day before plus one.  How many eggs does the chicken lay
on the sixth day?

>I showed this problem to an eleventh grade student-quite bright- and he
>was able to come up with the answer the next day.

But how did he arrive at the solution?  There are probably many
different ways to solve this problem---all useful.

-- 
Tom Scavo
scavo@cie.uoregon.edu