# Measuring Lumberjacks

On average, a lumberjack is 10 logs taller (logs are usually measured in feet) than a normal person plus the height of his tan. Remember that most lumberjacks are young Canadians. Fill the blanks of the following heights and explain why my reasoning is valid. Resulting heights are to be rounded to the closest whole number.

Before: 65", 66", 69", 71", 83", 89".

After Lumberjackification Ritual: 201, 204, 212, ? , ? , 402.

Hints:

1. A lumberjack's tan, or sunburn, is a 1st degree burn.

• This information is mostly (completely) false in real life.
• All information provided was given for a reason. Do not edit out the (made up) Canadian part.
• is 121 meant to be 221? – d'alar'cop Nov 14 '14 at 7:38
• Not quite. 121 was wrong but has been fixed (212). Sorry guys, it was late when I posted. Looking forward to the solutions, best of luck all. :D – DivideByZero Nov 14 '14 at 14:01
• Hint: $log = \log(x)$, $tan = \tan(y)$, $\mbox{something + log(x)}$, $\mbox{something + tan(y)}$. – LEGOlas Nov 14 '14 at 14:22
• The hint given as an answer was rather ovious, but I can't figure out why they have to be Canadians. Perhaps Canadians rhymes with radians? – SQB Nov 14 '14 at 14:41
• Ok... I have been juggling numbers all evening. My Idea is that Canadian refers to the Metric system. So my formula would be newheight = heigth + log(height)*10 + tan(height) and convert the height from inch to centimeter, but I just can't get the numbers to match up :-/ I also tried changing the interpretation of the tan() parameter to degrees and radians... – Falco Nov 15 '14 at 1:04

So I finally got it... a really nice riddle, except the part with 10 logs measuring in feet...

So 10 logs taller is log(10) in feet, so 1 foot or 12 inches
The tan of a lumberjack is the tangens-function of his height (taken as degrees)
The result has to be converted from inch to cm (factor 2.54)
because Canadians changed to the metric system!

The formula for lumberfication of old height h is:

(h + tan(h) + 12) * 2.54

This matches all numbers and results in:

(71 + tan(71°) + 12) * 2.54 = 218
(83 + tan(83°) + 12) * 2.54 = 262

• Correct, nice job! I will admit that the 12 inches instead of 1 inch thing was a afterthought of my first riddle (at first I was working in feet) that goes against the mindset that the puzzler has developed over time (in.). So for that, I would like to apologise. I will try to do a better job of designing for the player and not the riddle next time. Glad you enjoyed the riddle. – DivideByZero Nov 15 '14 at 20:03
• @user3155415 I really enjoyed the riddle, everything else was a nice Idea, especially the tan ;-) I proposed an edit to the question, which would make the riddle consistently great :-) – Falco Nov 16 '14 at 14:18
• nice edit, originally I was just doing logs but then I brainstormed on punny math abbreviations about lumberjacks and figured they had tans. – DivideByZero Nov 17 '14 at 2:41
• The mistake in my logic was trying to take 10log(x) where x is the height... – Psychemaster Nov 17 '14 at 15:38
• One could edit the question and add (...always 10 logs taller, irrsepective of his height...) but it is solvable ;-) – Falco Nov 17 '14 at 20:35