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Five Loaves of Bread

- The document discusses a short story called "Five loaves of bread" by Romanian writer Ion Creanga. - In the story, two travelers who each brought bread to share with a third traveler get into an argument over how to split the money given to them afterwards. - They take their case to a judge, who proposes a mathematical solution where he assumes each loaf was divided into 3 pieces and calculates how much each traveler ate of their own bread versus the newcomer's to determine the fair split of 5 lei is 4 lei for one traveler and 1 leu for the other.

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Irina Vasilescu
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4K views2 pages

Five Loaves of Bread

- The document discusses a short story called "Five loaves of bread" by Romanian writer Ion Creanga. - In the story, two travelers who each brought bread to share with a third traveler get into an argument over how to split the money given to them afterwards. - They take their case to a judge, who proposes a mathematical solution where he assumes each loaf was divided into 3 pieces and calculates how much each traveler ate of their own bread versus the newcomer's to determine the fair split of 5 lei is 4 lei for one traveler and 1 leu for the other.

Uploaded by

Irina Vasilescu
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Five loaves of bread

The story Five loaves of bread was written by the Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher Ion Creanga. His writings occupy the middle ground between a collection of folkloric sources and an original contribution to a literary realism of rural inspiration. He was born in Humulesti village, Piatra Neamt county, on 1st of March 1837. He was a smart kid, but very naughty. In 1875, he met Mihai Eminescu, our most famous poet, who became a very important person in his life and a good friend. It was Eminescu who urged Creanga to write and then to go to Junimea Literary Society and first read his works: the tales Soacra cu trei nurori ("The Mother with Three Daughters-in-Law") and Capra cu trei iezi (The Goat and Her Three Kids"). Besides these stories, his real work is Amintiri din copilarie (Childhood Memories), a very popular book who is read by children even today. Ion Creanga was and still is the most famous and beloved author of tales. But that would not have happened without the urging and encouragement of Mihai Eminescu.

Five loaves of bread is about two travelers who had stopped to eat something by the road. One of them had two loaves of bread and the other had three loaves. During the lunch, another traveler came to them and kindly asked to share their meal. So they all had lunch together, then, the third traveler wanted to reward them and paid them five lei (our national

currency). After he had left, the two men began to argue about splitting the money. The one who had had three loaves wanted to split it according to the number of loaves, while the other wanted to make it half-half. So, they decided to go to a judge. After hearing their story, the judge gave them the following Mathematical solution, totally different from their own alternatives: lets assume we cut each loaf in 3 parts, that makes 15 pieces if each man ate the same, that means each had 15 : 3 = 5 pieces the first man had had 3 loaves, that is 3 times 3 = 9 pieces, so he ate 5 pieces and gave the newcomer 4 pieces the second man had had 2 loaves, that is 2 times 3 = 6 pieces, so he ate 5 pieces himself and only gave away one piece therefore, the judge said, the first man should receive 4 lei, and he second one just 1 leu, because he had eaten most of his own bread himself.

The two men accepted the reasoning of the judge and left the place in peace. What do you think about the way the judge ruled, was it mathematically correct?

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