Math Question -- ahh, so confuzzled!?

Question

An average female mouse can give birth to 12 babies once a month. Baby mice can mature and give birth to babies at two months old.

If you bought one of these cute baby mice home from the pet store the day after it is born, how many mice would you have 10 months from now?

Answer 1

320,797 mice. That is if all the mice produced are female and you have a male mouse to help reproduce. Hope that helps with your very random questain! :D:D:D!!

Answer 2

Depends how many times did the first mouse's offspring have babies and how many were female? Just from the first mouse, you would have 97 babies. 96 from producing for 8 months (8x12) plus the original mouse. But then you have to add in all the other offspring and their offspring.

Answer 3

55 I think!

I used the Fibonacci sequence and the tenth term is 55

Answer 4

If the mouse becomes miraculously pregnant the number will be higher than 96 since in month 4 there will be 13 mice giving virgin births and 26 in month 6, etc.

The secret is that there is only one mouse to start with, gender unknown, and no way for the female to become pregnant.  This seems like another St Ives with an answer of 1.

Answer 5

It sounds like you have a trick question.  If you only bought one mouse home, there would be no way for it to have babies unless it was already inseminated in the store.

Answer 6

None if you don't get a male mouse.

Answer 7

You'll get mickey mouse? Mickey Rat i mean :)

Answer 8

it's 96.

Answer 9

Your baby mouse was 1 day old and is ready to reproduce in 2 months, so it has 8 months * 12 babies per month = 96

Please note on the logical side the answer would be 0 for the simple reason that a single mouse cannot give birth to babies.

If you said you had a baby female mouse and atleast one male mouse in the house than its 96.  ;) else its 0 ;)  

Answer 10

It's a trick question, None, cuz u got no male!

Answer 11

96

Answer 12

This is an exponential problem. As always, you start with a let statement and equation. HOWEVER, I will assume all the mice offspring will be female and will give birth each two month.

"Let y represent the number of mice after 10 months"

"Let n represent the number of mice repoduced after two months"

"Let r represent the rate of mice reproduction"

Equation : y=n^r

y=12^5 (You get 5 for r because since a mouse can reproduce twice a month you divide it by ten  which means a reproduction occurs only five times during the ten month)

y=248832

Therefore, there will be 248832 mice by the end of 10 month.

Answer 13

It generally helps to diagram problems like this so you can actually see what you're talking about.

If you start with 1 and it has 12 babies, draw 12 lines off of the one and label that "row" 3rd month.  Now, the next month, mama has 12 more babies.  The month after that, mama has 12 more, but each of the first 12 also have 12 once they are 2 months old.  Keep going until you have 8 rows (ie 10 months).

Mama herself is going to have 96 babies, but after 2 months, each of her babies are going to start having babies!

The first babies will have 6 months of baby making, the next group will have 5... the 6th group will have 1

So, for babies, it's (6*12)+(5*12)+(4*12)+(3*12)+(2*12)+(1*12... but that is only the original babies.  Now you have babies of babies.