Question

An eccentric philanthropist undertakes to give away $100,000. He is eccentric because he insists that each of his gifts be a number of dollars that is a power of two, and he will give no more than one gift of any amount. How does he distribute the money? Dudley, Underwood. Elementary Number Theory: Second Edition (Dover Books on Mathematics) (p. 113). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.

Answer 1

Answer:

Step-by-step explanation:

An eccentric philanthropist undertakes to give away $100,000. He is eccentric because he insists that each of his gifts be a number of dollars that is a power of two, and he will give no more than one gift of any amount. How does he distribute the money?

To solve this problem, we will simply write 1,00,000 in base 2.

2^17 gives 131072, 2^16 gives 65536.

So, the first gift is 65536, we then need to repeat this process for  34,464 ((100,000-65536 = 34,464), to get all gifts in succession.

6 gifts in all: one each of $32, $128, $512, $1024, $32768, and $65536.