Kind readers, As there is all too little humor in this world, I submit the
following to brighten up your day.  Don't blame me if you've already seen
it.

There are no right answers, by the way (at least that I know of).

MATH TEST FOR ORCHESTRAL MUSICIANS

1.  Armando is the dynamic new conductor of an orchestra and has increased
the ticket sales for the classical series to 95%.  If the concert hall
holds 3200 people, and the concerts begin promptly at 8:05 p.m., how many
digital watch alarms will go off within one minute of 9:00 p.m.? 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 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 Tuonela" 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.  Betty is tired of paying for clarinet reeds.  If she adopts a policy
of playing only on 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
twelve years, three months, and seven days.  Each day, his inclination
to practice decreases by the equation:  (Total days in the orchestra) x
.000976.  Assuming that he stopped practicing six months ago, how long
will it be before he is completely 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, how 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 that at each concert the
orchestra plays a minimum of three pieces, what are the chances that Horace
can avoid hearing a single work by Mozart, Beethoven, or Brahms in the next
ten years?

8.  Betty plays in the viola section.  Despite her best efforts she is
unable to play with the rest of the orchestra and, on average, plays .35
seconds behind the rest of the viola section, which is already .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, how long 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 that the entire
brass 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 they would all
have to practice to play the complete works of Richard Strauss?

David Simmons
[log in to unmask]
Virginia Beach, VA