April 10, 2007

Barge poll

Tehelka has a cover story this week on the results of a Mumbai poll. As a reaction to the results of the poll, I wrote this article for the magazine. Your comments welcome.

3 comments:

Vikrum said...

Article aside, what is up with this portrait on the Tehelka page?

Dilip D'Souza said...

Vik, quite a likeness, isn't it? I sent them a photo once to use; they seem to have used that to draw this line sketch, though in mirror image!

b. said...

nothing to do with the post, but since you like puzzles, here's one:

N is some integer. You pick some (N + 1) numbers from 1, 2, ..., 2N. Prove that in any such pick, there are always two numbers which are coprime. (Two numbers are coprime if their only common divisor is 1.)

Hint: First try to see how you can pick N numbers from 1, 2, .., 2N in such a way that no two are coprime. You will see that there is no space to put in the (N+1)th number coprime to all the others.