A mathmatic mystry

At the first house on ur route u drop of half of ur fruit
going to the second house u eat half of fruit
and then drop off half of the remaining fruit.
u make the third drop off, leaving u empty handed and go back to the market by more for the same route tommorow.

How many fruit do u need for the next day?

asuming you dont give someone half an eaten fruit

It could be anything as long as the number can be halved three times...

8 show me how u came to this conclusion.
By the way its not right

I come up with more then one answer

Biologists aren't known for their mathematical skills, though

Have 8 fruit.
Drop half at first house.
Have 4 fruit.
Eat half before 2nd house, now only have 2 fruit.
Drop off half of remaining fruit at 2nd house.
1 fruit left.
Last drop off, 3rd house, 1 fruit.
No fruit. Need 8 more tomarrow if I'm going to do it all over again.

Any even number greater than 6.

auqalung77 wrote:

At the first house on ur route u drop of half of ur fruit
going to the second house u eat half of fruit
and then drop off half of the remaining fruit.
u make the third drop off, leaving u empty handed and go back to the market by more for the same route tommorow.

How many fruit do u need for the next day?

Nice puzzle, but needs more information as to the state of the fruit. If we are talking whole pieces of fruit, the answer given by emetakleze being 8 (or a number divisible thereby) is correct.

If we are able to fracture a single piece of fruit, such as the slices in an orange, then the answer is any number, the least being 0 if using zero based math (thanks alot Dru, now you've got me doing it). Though I think this peddler would soon starve to death as using floating point calculations to solve this puzzle would prove to be bad for business.

macadamia wrote:

Any even number greater than 6.

This is basically what I was thinking

macadamia wrote:

Any even number greater than 6.

This won't work unless you can split a piece of fruit.

Example:

10 down to five
five down to 2.5
etc.
etc.

The answer (using whole fruit) must be able to be divided by two throughout the puzzle and still remain an even number with the exception of the last step. Work it backwards and see what you get (start with 1)

I can split a piece of fruit with a knife. More than once if I practice at it.

emetakleze wrote:

Have 8 fruit.
Drop half at first house.
Have 4 fruit.
Eat half before 2nd house, now only have 2 fruit.
Drop off half of remaining fruit at 2nd house.
1 fruit left.
Last drop off, 3rd house, 1 fruit.
No fruit. Need 8 more tomarrow if I'm going to do it all over again.

I would guess the answer is 6 as you don't actually need the 2 fruit that you ate, but then if we go by the half rule as stated in the question and not numbers then the first house would get 3 fruit and not the original 4... I'm not so sure about this one...

Hmm, Im gonna say you had 1 fruit. ?Thats right only one fruit.

First stop you eat 1/2 leaving you 1/2

you eat 1/2 leaving you 1/4

second drop you drop 1/2 leaving 1/8

last drop drop off the remaining fruit.

auqalung77 wrote:

At the first house on ur route u drop of half of ur fruit
going to the second house u eat half of fruit
and then drop off half of the remaining fruit.
u make the third drop off, leaving u empty handed and go back to the market by more for the same route tommorow.

How many fruit do u need for the next day?

Aha, my answer is 2

I drop off 1st fruit at the first stop
I eat half of the one remaining that leaves me with 1/2
then I drop off the 1/2 of that remaining fruit
then when I make the 3rd drop off, i am now empty handed because all I had left was a seed to drop off....

Well, I thought it was a creative answer....