How many beans make five?

Well there are several possibilities how to calculate beans:

5 = 1+1+1+1+1
5 = 2+1+1+1
5 = 2+2+1
5 = 3+1+1
5 = 3+2
5 = 4+1

or - more complicated:

5 = 10 / 2
5 = 15 / 3
5 = 20 / 4

or - still more complicated

5 = 3^3 - 22

YouŽll find a good online calculator at
Pocket Calculator
( http://www.df.lth.se/~mikaelb/pocketcalc-enu.shtml )

Search Strategy:
Because of the the complicated nature of your question I visisted the
follwing sites before getting back to google:
yahoo.com
web.de
altavista.com
metacrawler.com
and some more.

The final hit was
( ://www.google.de/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=de&q=online+calculator
)

till-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by michael2-ga on 19 Aug 2002 08:47 PDT

You've suggested many options, but haven't told me which is the
correct answer.  My mate tells me all your suggestions are wrong, and
that the answer is 6-1.

---

Clarification of Answer by till-ga on 19 Aug 2002 09:44 PDT

To clarify this:

I was talking of possibilities - not of the ONE answer as you might
have read. I gave you the perfect tool to get closer to one opf all
the "perfect" soltutions for a question with an endless number of
answers.
Just to remind you:

Online Calculator Site:
( http://www.df.lth.se/~mikaelb/pocketcalc-enu.shtml ) 


till-ga <----- hoping you are satisfied now

Just two stars, I think.  I was hoping for at least a link or two to
previous efforts to answer this question.  As it's so well known, it's
perhaps a bit of a dead end to try to answer as you did from first
principles.

I'd have given 5 stars to pinkfreud, though.

Dear Michael2,

The conventional answer is:
two beans, one bean, a bean and a half, and half a bean.

Carnegie

Hmmm.  So you disagree with till-ga as well...

There is an interesting scholarly discussion of this question here:

http://www.amsta.leeds.ac.uk/~pmt6jrp/personal/cabbage.html

It is my suspicion that Mr. Charles Cabbage (who purportedly wrote the
page linked above) is not, in fact, a cabbage, but is a human bean.

carnegie-ga -- the way my grandfather told it, it's "two beans and a
bean, a bean and a half, and half a bean". Close, but not quite the
same.

Aaaaaand the answer is 'bean, bean, bean & a half, half a bean & a bean!!!!!! duhh

Surely as any fule know, the established answer is

a bean, a bean, a bean and a half, half a bean and a bean.

The answer, established by Penelope Keith's voice, is FOUR.

One is a has bean.

willygee-ga is very nearly correct but not quite there. the correct,
definitive and final one and only answer is :- a bean, a bean, a half
a bean, a bean and ahalf and a bean. okay.