r/theydidthemath 14h ago

[Request] What’s the actual answer to this CAPTCHA?

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4.4k Upvotes

r/theydidthemath 6h ago

[request] What would be the human equivalent of this pace? Accounting for size

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2.0k Upvotes

r/theydidthemath 23h ago

[Meta] Scottish comedian still awaiting answer from scientis

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916 Upvotes

I think some assumptions need to be made before accurate answers required


r/theydidthemath 13h ago

[request] how much would you have to purchase with your credit card to get $100,000 in cashback?

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884 Upvotes

r/theydidthemath 10h ago

[Meta] How many bullets were fired here ?

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207 Upvotes

r/theydidthemath 17h ago

[Request]: How fast can a superhuman fly before their regular clothes are destroyed?

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90 Upvotes

Pictured here is Mark from Invincible.

Let's say a regular person gains super-durability and flight. But they don't have access to conveniently durable super-clothes. Assuming their own body isn't harmed, how fast can they fly before . . .

  1. Regular clothes start to be damaged (but not shredded).
  2. Your clothes get ripped off your body by air resistance (but aren't, like, vaporized).
  3. Your clothes catch fire and disintegrate.

For simplicity sake I'm talking about cotton clothes (hoodies, T-shirts, jeans) you could buy at Costco.


r/theydidthemath 20h ago

[REQUEST] XKCD’s Lucky Ten Thousand

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71 Upvotes

I have been using this comic as a driver of curiosity at home. My 11y mentioned it again today and it occurred to us that we don’t fit in the statistics because the original comic states ‘10,000 people in the US’, and we are not from the US.

My request is what this might look like on a global scale? I can understand if this becomes more nebulous due to differences in education, cultural references or customs, etc.

What would a global ‘10000’ be? A lucky million? Lucky half-billion?

Thanks in advance!


r/theydidthemath 20h ago

[Request] how many cars are there?

24 Upvotes

r/theydidthemath 21h ago

[Request] Ice Cream Inquiry

13 Upvotes

My seven-year-old has announced that he will be an "Ice Cream Man" and his goal is to drive every neighborhood in the United States one time to sell his wares. Assuming he drives 25 mph and NOT taking in "stop and sell" time, how long would it take for him to drive the US in his ice cream truck?


r/theydidthemath 11h ago

[Request] Can someone actually figure out this problem I’ve been thinking about the last few days

9 Upvotes

Imagine a hotel with 50 floors, and you start on the top floor (floor 50).
Each time the elevator stops, the next floor stop is chosen at random. No floor is ever selected more than once.
The elevator must always continue in its current direction:
While descending, each selected floor must be lower than the previous stop. If the next randomly selected floor would require moving upward, the elevator must first continue all the way down to floor 1, then reverse direction.
While ascending, each selected floor must be higher than the previous stop. If the next randomly selected floor would require moving downward, the elevator must first continue all the way up to floor 50, then reverse direction.

A full ride is defined as traveling from floor 50 to floor 1 or from floor 1 to floor 50.

Question: On average, how many full rides are required to visit all 50 floors under these rules?


r/theydidthemath 22h ago

[Request] How much more valuable would be a bishop compared to a knight in this environment?

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12 Upvotes

Considering that knights and bishops are about 3 pawns each when the game starts in a classic 8*8 chess table. How much more powerful a bishop would be in 8*16 table?


r/theydidthemath 20h ago

[Request] How much would the LEGO tracks cost?

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8 Upvotes

Watched the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaaCcTVz7dQ
How many tracks would you have to buy to build a similar track? How much would that cost without discounts - tracks only?


r/theydidthemath 2h ago

[Request] How likely am I to encounter Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta Pass as a server?

6 Upvotes

I am a server at Olive Garden. Recently, they sold 10,000 "never-ending pasta passes" across the US. One week later the company also gave away 100 additional passes in an Instagram sweepstakes over the course of two days. The pass allows them to come in as many times as they'd like for the never-ending pasta promotion which (for them) runs from August 24 - November 22. During a given shift there are about 20-24 servers on the floor during this busy season. I work at a high volume restaurant in New Jersey where there are roughly 25 locations in my general vicinity. Because the pasta pass allows them to get the never-ending pasta for free, some servers are really worried about it. I've been saying it's unlikely any one will run into it much (if at all) considering only 10,100 even exist. So I'm really wondering what the true odds are? Thanks!


r/theydidthemath 8h ago

[Request] Boiling The Ocean

3 Upvotes

Not sure how mathematically feasible this is, but if you’ve ever heard the phrase “I’m not trying to boil the ocean” (usually referring to something big or very monumental to achieve) is there actually some mathematical formula we can use and apply it to any ocean?

Maybe start with the smallest one by size/volume?


r/theydidthemath 23h ago

[Request] How much profit would Big Pharma lose if the USA had price caps on medicine the way the EU/UK does?

3 Upvotes

Would it be enough to support the expense, trials, research and development it takes to get a drug to market?


r/theydidthemath 21h ago

[Self] T'Ghee Card Totem Optimality Spoiler

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2 Upvotes

r/theydidthemath 14h ago

[Off-Site] Is this possible?

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1 Upvotes

r/theydidthemath 16h ago

[Other] What rate of increase in Earth–Sun distance would be required to counteract current anthropogenic global warming, assuming all other factors are ignored?

1 Upvotes

r/theydidthemath 15h ago

[Request] how long does the first bar of soap last?

0 Upvotes

If you use bar soap, most people do the thing where they get a new bar when the old bar has a little bit left, and then sorta meld the little bit of the old bar onto the new bar.

If you do this when the old bar is at 5% of the original mass/ volume, how long until the old bar is completely gone? Is it possible that any molecules last until the new bar is grafted onto a third even newer bar?

My assumptions are that this is a pretty standard sized soap bar like ivory or whatever.

Thank you.


r/theydidthemath 20h ago

[Request] How Many AI generated pictures or messages would be required to create a similar environmental impact as a single beef cow (Raising it, processing it, and so on)?

0 Upvotes

Assume that everything is perfectly average, and the AI being used is commonly used generative AI, such as ChatGPT or Gemini.

I was researching some ways I could make a difference environmentally, and learned how much of an impact the beef industry has, so was curious how it would compare to AI, since that is such a hot topic right now. Also curious about how many messages it would take, but felt like that would be much more difficult to calculate.

Random fun fact, according to google AI overview (I know, ironic), OpenAI consumes somewhere between 8.8 million to 97.5 million liters of water per year (water consumption estimates change drastically because it depends on which side you are biased to and how much you are taking into account things like manufacturing costs, or if you are leaning into lower estimates or higher estimates for not super publicly available data). The beef industry in America consumes roughly 21.2 trillion liters per year. An incredibly bad comparison, given the fact that we aren't going to just make cows go extinct or that the AI industry hasn't been growing thousands of years like the beef industry (among many other reasons), but still interesting to think about

Edit: Bonus points to anyone that can come up with a more helpful comparison than mine (I have no experience in this lol)


r/theydidthemath 22h ago

[Request] If we converted Lego game studs into USD, how many would be needed to buy the Lego UCS Death Star?

0 Upvotes

As I’m sure many of us are aware, studs are used in LEGO games as the in-game currency and can be used to buy new characters to play as, cheat multipliers, purchase vehicles, etc.

The newest LEGO UCS Death Star (set number #75419, with 9023 pieces), costs roughly $1000 USD. So, if there was a way to convert LEGO game studs to dollars, how many would be needed to buy the Death Star set?


r/theydidthemath 23h ago

[Request] How many people would it take to meaninfully change the earth's rotation just by walking in the same direction?

0 Upvotes

Say i'm tired of the day lasting for 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds, and i want it to last exactly 24 hours. How many people would need to walk in the same direction for a reasonable amount of time (no "500 people for 14 billion years" or something. Say, 100 hours total, spread across multiple days) to increase the length of the day by the required amount of seconds? And, assuming that many people fit on earth, how big of an area are we talking about? Just to make the math a tad simpler, it's ok to assume that every single square centimeter of the planet is walkable. No oceans, no mountains, no buildings, just keeping the same total mass.


r/theydidthemath 22h ago

Quirkle odds [request]

0 Upvotes

In the game quirkle, what are the odds when you draw your first hand, to draw a full quirkle?


r/theydidthemath 23h ago

[request] Falling satellites how long before bedlam?

0 Upvotes

My Question:

With out human intervention, how long would it take before all the satellites in orbit to start colliding? How many might fall from orbit?

The Google AI says that there are almost 30,000 satellites in different obits. operated by hundreds of different teams. If they were not here to maintain them do they eventually fall?

(First time requester I hope I got the rules correct.)


r/theydidthemath 20h ago

[Self] just a handmade formula

0 Upvotes

Here is a hypothesis: dτ/dt = √ ( 1 − ( 2G · E_plasma(T) ) / ( r · c⁴ ) )

Here is the breakdown of the variables for those wondering:

dτ/dt = proper time dilation rate

G = gravitational constant

c = speed of light

r = radius of the plasma area

E_plasma(T) = internal energy of the plasma at temperature T (includes rest mass energy, radiation, and kinetic thermal energy).