Klarinet Archive - Posting 000190.txt from 1997/10

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: I could not resist: Part 2 of 2
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 1997 12:14:29 -0400

Math Test for Orchestra Members

1. Armando is the dynamic new conductor of an orchestra and has
increased the ticket sales for the classical series 95%. If the
concert hall holds 3200 people, and the concerts begin promptly at
8:05 pm, how many digital watch alarms will go off within one
minute of 9pm? within 5 minutes?

2. Richard has been a professional timpanist for 35 years. In his
personal kit he owns 32 different yarn mallets, 12 different wool
mallets, 5 different rubber mallets, and 2 different polished brass
tack hammers. What are the odds that a conductor will ask him to
use different mallets at the first rehearsal of a Haydn symphony?
a Mahler symphony?

3. Julinda's orchestra performs Dvorak's "New World" symphony every
6 years, Sibelius' Swan of Tuoneola every 4 years, and Berlioz's
Overture to Benvenuto Cellini every 3 years. What are the odds
that, in any given year, the program notes will include the
sentence "The English Horn is neither English nor a horn"?

4. Sandy is tired of paying for clarinet reeds. If she adopts a
policy of playing only rejected reeds from her colleagues, will she
be able to retire on the money she has saved if she invests it in
mutual funds (yielding 8.7%) before she is fired from her job?

5. Jethro has been playing the double bass in a symphony orchestra
for 12 years, 3 months, and 7 days. Each day, his inclination to
practice decreases by the equation: (total days in the orchetra) x
.000976. Assuming that he stopped practicing altogether 6 months
ago, how long will it be before he is comletely unable to play the
double bass?

6. Wilma plays in the second violin section, but specializes in
making disparaging remarks about conductors and other musicians.
The probability of her making a negative comment is 4:7 for any
given musician and 16:17 for conductors. If there are 103
musicians in the orchestra and the orchestra sees 26 different
conductors each year, now many negative comments does Wilma make in
a two-year period? How does this change if five of the musicians
are also conductors? What if six of the conductors are also
musicians?

7. Horace is the General Manager of a symphony orchestra. He tries
to hear at least four concerts a year. Assuming the orchestra
plays a minimum of three pieces at each concert, what are the
chances that Horace can avoid hearing a single work by Mozart,
Beethoven, or Brahms in the next 10 years?

8. Betty plays in the viola section. Despite her best efforts she
is unable to play with rest of the orchestra and, on average, plays
0.35 seconds behind the rest of the viola sections, which is
already 0.16 seconds behind the rest of the orchestra. If the
orchestra is moving into a new concert hall with a reverberation
time of 2.7 seconds, will she be able to continue playing this way
undetected?

9. Ralph loves to drink coffee. Each week he drinks three more cups
of coffee than Harold who drinks exactly one third the amount the
entire bass section consumes in beer. How much longer is Ralph
going to live?

10. Rosemary is unable to play in keys with more than three sharps
without making an inordinate number of mistakes. Because her
colleagues in the cello section are also struggling in these
passages, she has so far been able to escape detection. What is
the total number of hours a day they would all have to practice to
play the complete works of Richard Strauss?

=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================

   
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