Jamie works at the Heavenly Days Precious Jade Chinese Buffet Restaurant. Here is how Jamie describes the staff. “There are 16 cooks and servers, including myself. In addition, whether you include me or not,
There are more servers than cooks;
There are more male cooks than male servers;
There are more male servers than female servers;
There is at least one female cook.”
What is Jamie’s gender and job?
Solution
Let’s sprinkle numbers into a grid such as the one in the figure, part A. Now, there are at least 9 servers, so at least 5 must be male. There are also more male cooks than male servers. This suggests the distribution in the figure, part B.
Fine, so far. But what is Jamie? Jamie must be someone who allows the conditions 1-4 to remain true even if dropped from the staff. It has to be a female server. Check it out! That's Jamie.
