CHANGING SEATS.
- The following problem may be found in many of our elementary books of
arithmetic: A club of eight persons agreed to dine together every day as
long as they could sit down to the table differently arranged. How many
dinners would be necessary to complete this arrangement?--Answer--by the
well known rule of permutation, it will be found that the whole party must
live 110 years and 170 days, and must eat 362,880 dinners. So rapidly does
the sum roll up on this process that if the party had consisted of one
more person, they would have had 443,520 dinners to get through; and if
ten persons were to enter into the compact, it would be necessary for them,
in order to complete their task, to live long enough to devour 3,628,800
dinners.
[Text: Edgar Allan Poe, "Changing Seats," from Alexander's Weekly Messenger, May 6, 1840, page 2, column 2]
The correspondent who writes us in regard to a permutation puzzle which
appeared in the Messenger a few weeks ago, is informed that an error occurred
in the printed article by the omission of a line. The answer is as he gives
it.
[These items were first attributed to Poe by Clarence S. Brigham in
Edgar Allan Poe's Contributions to Alexander's Weekly Messenger,
1943, pp. 74-75 and 80-81.]
[S:0 - Brigham]