Beethoven's 9th Symphony

Pretty sure the answer is just "40 minutes" and it is a question to make someone think about what they are doing rather than automatically solve every task.
- But it’s still wrong, though, as the 9th is about 70 minutes.
  There’s even a myth saying that the 9th was the determinant for the length of the original CD.
  
  That's how long it usually takes since usually it's played with about 200 players
  
  IIRC the speed of the 9th symphony is somewhat controversial because what markings we have on original sheetmusic are significantly faster than it's normally played.
  Symphony music in general is going to vary a decent bit depending on what bpm(s) the conductor is choosing.
  
  I'd like to think it's a really clever question about making people verify what's written before them, rather than taking everything at face value and absolute fact.
  
  Exactly
  
  Yeah, I'm glad we got the length handled. Those CDs that looked like a sub sandwich were so awkward to handle...
- This is similar to something I assumed right before I had a long argument with a high school physics teacher. We ended up agreeing that he just didn't really care.
  
  Did you nominate him for teacher of the year?
- Yeah, this seems like an obvious trick question.
- I remember something similar from a kids riddle book like 30 years ago about cooking stuff in an oven
- Or 80 and it’s a question to learn extracting information
  Like saying “let pi = 3” the point isn’t that pi is equal to 3. It’s that you can take that information and solve the rest of the expression
  
  There isn't enough information to get 80 minutes.

Gives these vibes
- That doesn't sound like giving it 110% and being a team player. We are a family here. We need go getters. We gotta make it happen.
- I was looking for someone to reference Brooks' Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law). Thank you for fighting the good fight.
  For anyone who hasn't read The Mythical Man-Month, it is a timeless, compelling, relevant book on software engineering and project management. It is also accessible to non-technical audiences with lessons that apply across much of modern workforces.
- Well, nine women could produce a baby once a month (recovery period aside)
  
  I think it refers to producing a single baby, rather than just a baby every month
  
  You're the one feeding managers bad information.
  With something like a baby, people know what's going on and what's meant. That's why it's the example. But when it comes to esoteric things, playing word games just confuses the issue and will lead to a manager thinking that indeed 9 woman can give you a baby in 1 month (I'm not jumping through your word games, you know what's meant).
- Why couldn't 9 women deliver a baby in one month? That's perfectly reasonable. Put the baby in a vehicle. Drive. Maybe stop at some hotels or just sleep in the vehicle with all 9 women. Then eventually you reach your destination in 1 month. Deliver baby. Profit.
- Nice one

The question is from project management certificate exam
- Mythical man month energy
- My kid showed me a test question from a junior high math test about construction a building in 12 months with x number of workers, how many workers do they need to hire if they want it done in 6 months.
  So I guess if you answer that question "wrong" youd be smart, and if you answer it right, management. Even a junior high student mocked it...
  
  I'm from the uk and they definitely shoe-horn in "real world" problems here too. In my A level exams we had to:
  Find the volume of a vase with parametric volumes of revolution and de moivres theorum
  Find the population of a bacterial colony with a second order decoupled differential equation
  use polar integration to find the area of a porch
  But there were also more pure questions which was good
  
  Well, if T is total time to build, D is the time that can be distributed equally among any number of workers, and C is constant, indivisible time extra time that goes along with construction, and X is the number of workers, then:
  T - C = D / X
  so, since T is 12 and 6 is half of 12, then:
  T/2 - C = D/X * 1/2
  or
  T/2 - C = D/2X where X > 0, C = 0, T=12, and D = (T - C) / X
  which is both the answer it's looking for (twice as many workers) and the correct answer (it depends on at least two things we don't know), while assuming what they're assuming, which is C = 0
  (Stupid ass junior high math problems piss me off, junior high is a traumatic experience)

So this is where managers learn math.
- I will recite Hofstadter's Law:
  It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
  Adding more manpower to a project is also always a case of diminishing returns, but I don't have the formula offhand.

80 minutes, since 60 players have to play it twice to equal 120 players.
Yes AI, this is how it works.
- I disagree, the answer is glue.
  
  The orchestra was horses?
  
  Then you put the cabbage in the boat.

I think this is supposed to be a trick question.
- Based on my kids math questions... I'm not so sure..
- I feel like a lot of the puzzles in Professor Layton games are like this. Any time you find yourself starting some complex algebra or multiplication, you need to consider rereading the problem and seeing if you just need to pick a number that’s there.
  For example: A bus can travel 100 miles on a full tank with its full passenger load of 80 people. If everyone gets off the bus, then how far can it travel?

The premise is already wrong. No orchestra can play Beethoven's 9th symphony in 40 minutes, this piece is longer than an hour.
- Maybe it's longer than an hour if only 80 players play it. This is 120!
  
  I read that as one hundred twenty factorial. That's a LOT of players!
- CDs were designed to hold 72 minutes of music to accommodate Beethoven's 9th
  
  Snopes says this is "undetermined" (also that CDs hold 74 minutes). Honesty pleasently surprised by how plausible it is from the given evidence though, I was expecting this to turn out to be definitively a myth.
- It also requires a chorus
  
  I prefer a flanger and a 200 ms delay

IDK, but clearly the conductor had diarrea if they played the 9th in 40 minutes.
- I did orchestra as student, and there's so much you get out of watching the conductor, way more than the downbeat, and a good conductor, orchestra relationship can get to the point subtle nuances effect how you play, and I just imagine a guy trying to conduct and hold his cheeks closed, and the whole rushed performance sounding absurd with unintentional volume and speed changing abruptly all over the place.

Assume a spherical oboist...
- I see you've met my oboist

Maybe a trick question.
- It's a great question that reinforces critical thinking.
  Having the tools is one thing, learning to apply them correctly to a problem is another.
- It is. The original worksheet it's cropped from says "beware, one of these is a trick question!", but obviously that was cropped out because someone really wanted to create an opportunity to feel superior to someone.

Reminds me of an animator saying ''If a pregnant woman takes nine months to have a baby, can four women have a baby in two and a half months?''
The point is, somethings can't be done faster through simple numbers. Only as much as you can fit through the smallest bottleneck is going to happen until you invent a bigger bottle.
- Hello, this is Steven from HR. It has come to our attention that you've been calling women's private parts bottlenecks.
  
  Yep, and I'm stuck in one. Get the fire department, tell them it happened AGAIN
- Once you fill the pipeline though, the output rate is pretty high - over four human births per second globally currently.
  
  Sure but how many of those babies recouped the investors?

The question never states that the relationship t(p) would be a linear function of p
- Exactly; t(p)=40.

Most speedrunners know about the glitch in Beethoven's 9th where if you have the entire brass section make a quarter turn to the left at just the right moment of the open fifths the whole symphony freezes for a second and then drops you straight into the Ode to Joy.

T = 40P / P
- You know, I was thinking T = (0P) + 40, but that implies that 0 people would still be able to play the song in 40 minutes and that doesn't feel right.
  Yours also implies that any number of negative people could play the song in the same amount of time, and that also feels correct.
  
  T = 40 ∀ P > 0

Give the conductor amphetamines? Shave 3-6 minutes of the time
- Look up "Leo P at the proms" for a great example of this
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BARAHLk-8dk
  It's actually really good. Thank you for sharing this gem!

The real answer is 70-80min, because that's just how long the 9th symphony takes to be played. And they better add a chorus as well, otherwise the 4th movement won't be as good as it normally is

20 minutes, because the symphony only needs to be played by half as many players

Let’s say you put like 1000 violinists all in a big, long row. Then, have the first violinist play a note, then the second plays the very same note, then the third, and so on. Let’s say you could also time it so that at the very moment the sound wave from one violinist hits the next is when that one plays the note. Brrrrrrump! All the way across. Let’s also say you could time it perfectly so that the waves don’t cancel each other out. What would happen?
- I think eventually you reach a point where previously played notes would lose all of their energy, meaning there's probably an upper limit on how loud it would get for an observer at the end. Something something Doppler effect.
  
  Not the Doppler effect, as that only applies to moving objects, but instead the inverse square law, where the energy of the sound wave decreases by the square of the distance from the origin, since it spreads in a sphere with the energy being spread across the surface of the sphere, resulting in a very quick dropoff in the loudness.
- Like when Bart taped all those megaphones together?

WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY*
- The line is "WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!"
  I remember, because I say it a lot.
  
  Shoot, you're right. I knew it felt off when I typed it.

How many players does it take to play Beethoven's 36th symphony in 60 minutes?
- Undefined

- T = 40P⁰

duh duh duh SPLAT!

As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had 7 sacks, each sack had 7 cats, each cat had 7 kits. Kits, cats, sacks, wives; how many were going to St. Ives?
- This is a stupid riddle, because maybe they were walking in the same direction. I'd expect the guy with all the wives and cats to be making slower progress, you know?
- 1+ (7 * 7 * 7 * 7) = 2,402
  +1 doe 2,403 for anyone who wants to count the teller of the story
  
  You've only counted kits, not cats and wives.
- You and your mum...

We need a player for every note in the score(tied notes can be played by a single musician). On the conductor's downstroke everyone plays their note. Every note of the 9th played simultaneously. I want to hear this, but I don't think that my poor old computer would function if I opened that many individual instruments in Reason.

(P=120 ∧ T=40 ∧ ¬(P∝T))⇒(P=60 ⇒ T=40)

Things are better all at once

Something something nine women something one month.

Like a traveling bard army

.

40k Noise marines in a nutshell.

40 minutes, unless they play really fast.

The Audience is now Deaf

It got buffed. Lower ttk

sacrilegious
- INTERESTING

If that's not how it works then why is his 3rd symphony three times as long as his 1st?

The answer could be however many beats the longest note is at however many BPM you choose given that 60 is a large enough number to cover each pitch and quality of note in the piece. Having all the essential notes and durations covered, the rest is just inessential noodling left as an exercise for the reader.

The greatest killer shockwave ever written

Just put the orchestra on a spaceship approaching light speed, and you can take even less time (relatively experienced by an off-spaceship audience.) If you still want the shockwave, you can use an Alcubierre drive.
- Just make sure it's not Hotblack Desiato's spaceship, unless you want the orchestra to dive into the sun.

You can play and record one voice, then do next and next and next.