Can you do this pattern? (#2!!) only one question! easier than first! 5 stars if right!?
by The Cow Exchange
We explore how many handshakes in a room, given a number of hands.
The asker deleted their Yahoo! Answers question before I could add my response to the Answers site. I'm still posting the song here of course.
The question was essentially, "If everyone in the room shakes hands with everyone else in the room, ALL AT ONCE, how many handshakes occur? The number of handshakes in the room depends on __________. The equation to determine this is ___________. Let N be the number of handshakes in the room.", and was clearly someone's homework problem.
Probably my last overtly mathy song for a while. And hand-y song. Just trying to keep momentum.
Fun fact: my orange shaker died in the recording of this tune. I kept the handle... the rest was cushioned by the wall.
CHORUS
The total total number of the handshakes in the room depends on the total total number of the people in the room, the number of the people in the room who have hands.
If you let N equal the number of handshakes in the room, then the number of handshakes in the room equals N. It's a simple equation, so why the evasion of your homeywork, my friend?
But we've got other problems too. When the party starts, each person grabs the others to do-si-do. But they do it at once, with their fingers, and they never use their toes. That's gonna be a problem with more than 3 peeps on the floor! Unless these folks are aliens, with 3 hands or more. (If you do it at once you can't have more shakes than hands!)
But anyway (assuming n = peeps): 0.5n^2 - 0.5n. Show your work! And remember...
(Repeat CHORUS)
..and make sure they're hands.
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