Word Math

 There is a small wire basket on my desk, it holds my pens.  There are currently 17 pens and one Sharpie in the basket.  The unknown factor at this time is how many words are in each pen.  I believe a reasonable guess would be that a person could expect to get 14 pages of writing from each pen, not counting the Sharpie.

With standard spacing and normal size font, a person should be able to get four good-sized paragraphs per page.  That equates to 10 sentences per paragraph, or 400 words per page.  14 pages times 400 is 5,600 words.  That’s 56 paragraphs.

Assume for the moment that you could find an average student.  Not some over achiever but just some normal looking student walking around campus, a vacant expression on their face, perhaps, searching for the cafeteria.  You stop them and offer them 10 cents a word to be a stringer on the school newspaper.  All they have to do is bring in stories of life on campus.

Okay, so Joe Schmo accepts the task and starts bringing in stories for the school paper, the Sometimes Why.

This is a large campus of a major university, so obviously you have a need for more than just the one stringer.  Let’s say you have 9 stringers total.  That’s a potential of 50,400 dimes you will need to pay your staff of reporters.

Now the advertising department, the ones tasked with selling ads to generate revenue are hitting up the pizza places, the pubs, the local car dealerships and the bookstores.  Each one needs to run ads in the Sometimes Why in order to keep the paper afloat.  In order to entice these business to place ads in the school paper, the circulation department needs to show adequate circulation.  They must be able to show how these advertisements will be seen by thousands of potential customers.

Here's where the Sharpie comes in.  The graphic arts department will need to draw up charts and graphs, with population density, timelines, distribution points and yearly projections, adequate to convince the small business owner to invest.

Meanwhile, somewhere across campus, a sinister plot is afoot to ban the use of Sharpies, suggesting their fumes wreak havoc with the math gene.

 

 From what you have been told, answer the following;

1.    Where was Joe Schmo headed?

2.    What is his current major?

3.    How many pizzas will need to be sold to cover the
        cost of an ad in the Sometimes Why?

4.     Does a black Sharpie and a red Sharpie smell the same?

5.    Could it be the smell of the Sharpie that caused the math error in
        jumping from 4 paragraphs equaling 400 words?  How many words
        per sentence is that?  I'm sorry, but that just doesn't smell right.