Tuesday
Mar252008
A Gaggle of Geese Goodies
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 7:31PM A Problem with Geese
A man driving his geese to market was met by another who said, “Good morrow, with your hundred geese.” He replied, “I have not a hundred, but if I had half as many more as I now have, and two geese and a half, I should have a hundred.” How many had he?
[From the Farmer’s Almanac Newsletter]
A Piece of Goose Art
St.-Annen-Kirche zu Graupen in Böhmen
Adrian Ludwig Richter
Some Goose Etymology
gaggle 
c.1470, gagyll, with ref. to both geese and women. Barnhardt says possibly from O.N. gagl “goose;” OED calls it “one of the many artificial terms invented in the 15th c. as distinctive collectives referring to particular animals or classes of persons.” Possibly of imitative origin (cf. Du. gagelen “to chatter;” M.E. gaggle “to cackle,” used of geese, attested from 1399).
Source
c.1470, gagyll, with ref. to both geese and women. Barnhardt says possibly from O.N. gagl “goose;” OED calls it “one of the many artificial terms invented in the 15th c. as distinctive collectives referring to particular animals or classes of persons.” Possibly of imitative origin (cf. Du. gagelen “to chatter;” M.E. gaggle “to cackle,” used of geese, attested from 1399).
Source
Solving the Goose Problem:
“…if I had half as many more as I now have, and two geese and a half, I should have a hundred.”
The number of geese now, with half the number now, with two and a half geese more, is one hundred geese.
x + .5x+ 2.5 = 100
1.5x = 97.5
x = 65
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