Why the name Murmelloch?

Well, the German for Marmot is Murmeltier so I am translating Murmelloch as Marmot Hole. There is a German expression: "schlafen wie ein Murmeltier" which means "to sleep like a log". A Marmot is a furry rodent about the size of a large cat that can be found in the Alps. They live in burrows and give out a high pitched whistle as a danger signal that sounds very like a bird.

When I have walked past a Marmot Hole I have often wondered what was going on inside it and for the purposes of this blog there will be activities that take place outside the hole, for example the first two entries and musings from me that take place inside the hole.

So, the musing...

I was thinking about the dog in the last posting. I had been wondering how far the dog would go if it kept running from the front of the walking group to the back and then returning.

I was thinking about this again on the way to work this morning. [Yes. I know...] I was thinking: 'If x is the length of the walk and y is the speed of the party... bla bla bla.' 'mmm...I will need a pencil and paper'.

Then it dawned on me. It was easy. If the dog is running all the time and the people are walking all the time (an assumption for simplicity's sake) then suppose the dog goes 3 times faster than the people. That means she will have run three times further than them by the end of the walk. Simples!

This is an example of an apparently complicated problem that turns out to be easy if you think about it a different way. You sort of start at the end.

Another example: 4,067 football teams enter a knockout competition. How many matches do you need to play?

At first you might start with an easier example, a good problem solving strategy. Suppose there were 8 teams. That's 4 games (Quarter Finals) then two games (Semi Finals) then one game (The Final). However, if the number of teams isn't a power of two like 8, 16, 32 etc. it gets a bit more complicated with byes and so on.

It seems difficult until you think about the other way.

Every match eliminates one team and at the end there is a winning team that wasn't eliminated. Therefore you need one less match than the number of teams. Answer - 4,066 matches. Simples!

Time to go back to sleep.