The English Mathematician
It is finally time for the new puzzler!
Here we go. This one is as good as it gets, I think. It's historic, folkloric, and probably mostly made up, but it has some merit anyway.
It was a dark and stormy night. The location is a secret air field somewhere in England during World War II. The RAF had summoned one of England's most noted mathematicians to help them solve a problem. He will remain nameless because I don't know his name... Anyway.
They were having a problem, because they were attempting to bomb Germany, and because of German anti-aircraft fire based on the ground, the English were suffering tremendous losses, and their planes would get shot down. The RAF realized that they had to do something to diminish their losses, and they summon this mathematician to help.
Now, clearly, they could put armor plating on the bottoms of the fuselages and the wings, and that would solve the problem of getting shot, but they would be too heavy, and their range would be diminished due to the extra weight. And their ability to carry cargo, ammunition and bombs would be diminished. It just was not a good solution, as is.
So they summoned this mathematician. He crawls around underneath the planes and looks at where the bullet holes are. I mean, there are bullet holes all over the place on these planes, in the wings and the fuselage, and seemingly distributed randomly on the undersides of these planes.
He studies them, perhaps hundreds of planes, and then he makes his recommendation.
The puzzler question is, very simply, what armor plating, if any, did he recommend putting on these planes and why?
Good luck.
