| As I Was Going To St Ives |
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The words are, in one version, as follows: : ''As I was going to St Ives '' : ''I met a man with seven wives'' : ''And every wife had seven sacks'' : ''And every sack had seven cats'' : ''And every cat had seven kits'' : ''Kits, cats, sacks, wives'' : ''How many were going to St Ives?'' There are a number of places called St Ives in England and elsewhere. SOLUTION The answer to the riddle is usually said to be one: the person reciting the rhyme was going to St Ives, and everyone else was going the opposite way. Depending on how the question is interpreted, the answer could also be zero: the person travelling to St Ives is not any of "kits, cats, sacks, wives". Even with this interpretation, however, the answer could be one: in the case the narrator is a wife. Going ''away'' from St Ives were: one (1) man, seven (7) wives, seven times seven (49) sacks, seven times seven times seven (343) cats, and seven times seven times seven times seven (2,401) kits, making a total of 8 humans, 49 sacks, and a somewhat implausible 2,744 felines; a grand total of 2,800 kits, cats, sacks, and wives (or 2,801 if you include the man). However, as "sacks" are inanimate objects, 2752 presumably living creatures were headed away from St. Ives. It should be noted that, although it is usually assumed that the man with the wives was going ''away from'' St Ives, it may well be true that they were going ''to'' St Ives: obviously, on my way to a place, I can meet somebody going to the same place; if they were dragging along sacks filled with 2,744 cats and kittens, it would be easy to overtake them. In that case, the answer is 2800 or 2801. Another solution derives from the fact that the narrator mentions that the man has seven wives, but does not explicitly state that the wives are present, nor their sacks, cats, and kits. If the man is travelling to St. Ives and not away, the answer could be two, one, or zero (depending on if you count only wives, sacks, cats, and kits, and if the narrator be a wife). Yet another answer is that one is in fact the proper answer, given that the man and his cadre of wives, cats, and kittens could be living in a house along the way to St Ives, and the narrator simply paused along the way at his house. Another solution would treat the riddle as a Red Herring , and state that the average number of wives, sacks, cats and kittens travelling to a large market town in the 18th century could easily number much more than the 2801 mentioned in the riddle. RHIND MATHEMATICAL PAPYRUS A similar problem is found in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (Problem 79), dated to around 1650 BC . The papyrus is translated as follows {Link without Title} : The problem appears to be an illustration of an Algorithm for Multiplying numbers. The sequence 7, 7 × 7, 7 × 7 × 7, ..., appears in the right-hand column, and the terms 2,801, 2 × 2,801, 4 × 2,801 appear in the left; the sum on the left is 7 × 2,801 = 19,607, the same as the sum of the terms on the right. Note that the author of the papyrus miscalculated the fourth power of 7; it should be 2,401, not 2,301. However, the sum of the powers (19,607) is correct. The problem has been Paraphrase d by modern commentators as a Story Problem involving houses, cats, mice, and grain, although in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus there is no discussion beyond the bare outline stated above. The Hekat was 1/30 of a cubic Cubit (approximately 4.8 Litre ). SEE ALSO |
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