[thechao]

I took me surprisingly long to convince myself the author was correct: the answer is 48 because there's 4x as many hens and 4x as many days: 3 x 4 x 4 = 48. The "wrong" way to solve this problem is to compute hen-laying in terms of hen-egg-days, and then scaling.

[jaclaz]

>The "wrong" way to solve this problem is to compute hen-laying in terms of hen-egg-days, and then scaling.

I am not sure to understand what you mean by "wrong" way, I got the right result through a different reasoning that seems to me based on hen-egg-days.

It takes 3 days for 3 hens to make 3 eggs.

The 3 days time are "fixed", i.e. it takes 3 days for each hen to make its own egg.

The egg production rate is 1/3 egg per day per hen.

So I have 12 hens x 12 days x 1/3 = 144 x 1/3 = 48

[c22]

I dunno, I immediately noted that 12 hens must lay 12 eggs in 3 days (it takes 3 days for a hen to lay an egg). Then I just asked myself how many 3-days are in 12-days--okay, 12 [eggs] * 4 [3-day egg periods] = 48...

I didn't need to resort to pen and paper, but I'm also not in primary school.

[jimmaswell]

I always skip straight to dimensional analysis for such a thing.

3 eggs / 3 chickens / 3 days * 12 chickens * 12 days cancels out to 48 eggs

[jkubicek]

There are a lot of right ways to solve this problem, but this is clearly the most fun way.

[hgsgm]

That's because it's output/input = eggs/(hen*day), not eggs/(hen/day), which is clear from meaning and logic if you aren't a GPT 2 LLM

[mlajtos]

There is a visual illustration in the article. I thought it might be useful for understating why it's 48.