Puzzle from Good Will Hunting

Ben's local shop stocks eggs in boxes of capacity 6, 9, or 20 eggs. What is the highest number of eggs that you CAN'T make?

For example, you can make 29 with one 9 box and one 20 box, 29=9+20,

you can make 30 with a five 6 boxes, 30=5x6.

but you can't make 31.


For those wanting an extra puzzle, can you prove that your answer is correct. Namely, all numbers higher than your chosen integer can be written as a linear combination of 6, 9 or 12.

Maths at the Movies: Good Will Hunting

Last week we did A Beautiful Mind and now Good Will Hunting. We are really hitting all the well-known maths films at the moment aren't we?

More importantly joining us this week we have the wonderful

Dr James Grime

Philanthropist, playboy, billionaire... he is none of this things, but he may have identified the real Will Hunting!

This week we touch on such subjects as:

• Is University a scam?
• Good Will Hunting needs a prequel!
• Will James and Liz ever write a paper about the maths of Dirty Dancing?

 

If you're interested in watching Good Will Hunting you can follow the Amazon link below. 

Further reading links:

• What is the Hadwiger-Nelson problem and who is Aubrey de Grey?
• We also mention the fields of Combinatorics, Graph theory and Fourier theory.

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