This one weird trick will get you infinite gold - Dan Finkel

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A few years ago, the king decided your life would be forfeit unless you tripled the gold coins in his treasury. Fortunately, a strange little man appeared and magically performed the feat. Unfortunately, you promised him your first-born child in exchange for his help — and today he’s come to collect. Can you figure out how to outsmart the man and keep your baby? Dan Finkel shows how.

Lesson by Dan Finkel, directed by Gavin Edwards, Movult.

This video made possible in collaboration with Brilliant

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[brodeyzade]

Never thought I'd see TED-ed have a video titled like a Buzzfeed article

[grenishsinxRgold]

Clicked for the curiosity of gold. But I got trapped with a math problem. Touche.

[noidea]

1:11 that's the first time EVER I heared the TED narrator change his tone in any way.

[kriticanamchu]

"Also, it's on the back of your shirt." 💀

[spacefun]

For anyone wondering, I found a closed form function for the bag that you could graph on a calculator: f(x) = It could probably simplified, but this works for all positive x where f(f(x)) = 3x.

[Reletr]

For once I have thought too hard in an attempt to solve a ted-ed puzzle instead of throwing up my hands in confusion. Thank you VSauce for teaching me about Banarch-Tarski

[zoesato]

I really appreciate the time effort the animator(s) put into this. As someone who animates casually for fun this is really impressive.

[aisadal]

If only all math tests could be like this; I'd be way more invested if they were like this

[Penguinmanereikel]

I hope whoever animated this get jobs at big studios, because I found it so pleasing to watch.

[LethalPigeon]

Trying to figure out the general formula, and finding out the answer is "you have a set number, just brute force it until you get to it" is incredibly dissapointing, but, incredibly on theme for riddles, where misdirection and unusual ways of thinking are common tools. Cool.

[noahahmed]

I’m a huge fan of the art style of this video! Please have this animation team back!

[kingwolf]

New lore for the riddleverse? Yay. Clearly she figured it out because he has green eyes which means if he saw two frogs and one said ozo the fuddly must have used the tri source to make the bag for him.

[LegendaryFartMaster]

Interesting facts about this puzzle

1) There is an OEIS entry where a(n) is the dollar amount that comes out when used once on n

2) In 1992, British Math Olympiad tasked students to find the number of coins that came out when 1992 coins were put in. This was Q5.

3) There is a really elegant (IMO) way to get the answer for any n:
Convert n to base-3, (ternary). It either starts with 1 or 2.
If it started with 1, then the answer is the same number but the lead digit is 2 instead. Example, 13 is 111 in base 3, so the answer is 211 in base 3 which is 22 in base 10

If it started with 2, change the lead digit to 1 and add a zero at the end.
So 1992, which is 2201210 in base 3 becomes 12012100 which is 3789 in base 10(and is the solution to BMO Q5)

Proving this is pretty fun, but I'm not good at articulating it as a YT Comment, so i leave that as a challenge to you!

[chessematics]

This was the most creative way of presenting Banach-Tarsky.

[JasonMomos]

*Me who clicked hoping to make infinite gold:*

I've been tricked, I've been backstabbed and I've been quite possibly, bamboozled. My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined. 💀

[kyro]

The tone of this one was soo completely different from the usual riddles! So many quick jokes and character breaks, it was very funny

[immyownperson]

Thought it was a hack, then thought it was a fairytale animation. It turned out to be functions chasing me to the internet 😂

[bowboi]

Bruh, can't y'all just put the baby in the bag and get like, 2 or 3 babies? Then the Tarski guy can take the other two away, and everything would be fine!z

[Bhuvan_MS]

The explanation went above my head lol.

[San-lhus]

you guys should sell pedagogic courses to the schools of the world, because if we were introduced to science and math like this, so many more people would love learning