Pretty sure the answer is just “40 minutes” and it is a question to make someone think about what they are doing rather than automatically solve every task.
But it’s still wrong, though, as the 9th is about 70 minutes.
There’s even a myth saying that the 9th was the determinant for the length of the original CD.
IIRC the speed of the 9th symphony is somewhat controversial because what markings we have on original sheetmusic are significantly faster than it’s normally played.
Symphony music in general is going to vary a decent bit depending on what bpm(s) the conductor is choosing.
Any decent conductor is going to to vary the beat based on how long it takes for sound to fill the venue in question. Beethoven’s choices for the music halls in Vienna might have made sense then, but not so much today.
One of the things that’s always annoyed the conductors that I’ve worked with is that we always ignore the dynamics in his music. Beethoven’s markings are expressive, subtle. And we always play his stuff louder than indicated.
This is similar to something I assumed right before I had a long argument with a high school physics teacher. We ended up agreeing that he just didn’t really care.
Or 80 and it’s a question to learn extracting information
Like saying “let pi = 3” the point isn’t that pi is equal to 3. It’s that you can take that information and solve the rest of the expression
Gives these vibes
I was looking for someone to reference Brooks’ Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law). Thank you for fighting the good fight.
For anyone who hasn’t read The Mythical Man-Month, it is a timeless, compelling, relevant book on software engineering and project management. It is also accessible to non-technical audiences with lessons that apply across much of modern workforces.
Well, nine women could produce a baby once a month (recovery period aside)
I think it refers to producing a single baby, rather than just a baby every month
Yes, which is why I phrased my statement as “Well, … could…” to indicate an alternative perspective. This was to illustrate that sometimes pithy reductive quips can be based on overly reductive assumptions. Maybe it is the case that a single baby is all that’s required, but maybe the author misunderstood the goal.
You’re the one feeding managers bad information.
With something like a baby, people know what’s going on and what’s meant. That’s why it’s the example. But when it comes to esoteric things, playing word games just confuses the issue and will lead to a manager thinking that indeed 9 woman can give you a baby in 1 month (I’m not jumping through your word games, you know what’s meant).
Making assumptions about what’s meant, and expecting people to make assumptions about what you mean, is how problems happen. Thorough communication is the cornerstone of understanding.
The question is from project management certificate exam
My kid showed me a test question from a junior high math test about construction a building in 12 months with x number of workers, how many workers do they need to hire if they want it done in 6 months.
So I guess if you answer that question “wrong” youd be smart, and if you answer it right, management. Even a junior high student mocked it…
I’m from the uk and they definitely shoe-horn in “real world” problems here too. In my A level exams we had to:
- Find the volume of a vase with parametric volumes of revolution and de moivres theorum
- Find the population of a bacterial colony with a second order decoupled differential equation
- use polar integration to find the area of a porch
But there were also more pure questions which was good
Well, if T is total time to build, D is the time that can be distributed equally among any number of workers, and C is constant, indivisible time extra time that goes along with construction, and X is the number of workers, then:
T - C = D / X
so, since T is 12 and 6 is half of 12, then:
T/2 - C = D/X * 1/2
or
T/2 - C = D/2X where X > 0, C = 0, T=12, and D = (T - C) / X
which is both the answer it’s looking for (twice as many workers) and the correct answer (it depends on at least two things we don’t know), while assuming what they’re assuming, which is C = 0
(Stupid ass junior high math problems piss me off, junior high is a traumatic experience)
Well, arguably still “incorrect” in real world terms since it fails to have an adjustment for divisibility of D as a function of how many people. If theoretically a task is “perfectly divisible” at two people and halves the time, it will not be the case that a million people will cause it to happen in one millionth of the time. Improvement by expressly pointing out “C” and declaring your assumption of zero for math to work. Also assumption than for any increment of X, the time impact is equal.
In math this is pedantic, but it sure impact project planning in very disastrous ways, and business people love to assume C is zero, any change to X is linear and with linear impact, and make embarrassingly bad calls as a result.
So this is where managers learn math.
80 minutes, since 60 players have to play it twice to equal 120 players.
Yes AI, this is how it works.
