Saturday, February 27, 2010

A Coin Quiz

OK, here's a coin quiz:

What US coin has the highest value, according to the denomination in numbers (not words) given on it?

Yes, it is a trick question - but one a mathematician should appreciate.

Put your guesses in the comments.

For the surprising answer, come back tomorrow.

10 comments:

Harriet said...

The current silver (coin) dollar has "1 dollar" on it.

But the old nickles had a "V" on the back with no denomination on it and were sometimes gold plated and passed as 5 dollar coins.

Barry said...

The highest denomination I can find on a coin issued by the U.S. Government (not a privately struck gold coin) is the 10.00 dollar denominated brass "bingle" Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corporation Tokens of 1935.

Anonymous said...

I'm confused by the question.
"highest value, according to denomination in numbers"?
I thought "denomination" included unit such as "cent", "quarter", "dollar"? - how can those be expressed in numbers? Is this asking for largest number expressing units? Offhand, there is 50 as in "50 C" on some half-dollars. But there is no trick in that.

The stella (pattern only, i'm assuming this doesn't count) has a 400 on it. I don't know of any lazy 8's.

Anonymous said...

oh, and the trade dollar (since demonetized) has a 420, as in grains.

jah

Anonymous said...

DIME
D,I, M as in roman numerals (although in unacceptable order) and E as e

jah

Unknown said...

I might not understand the question but are you talking about some 50 cents? (I do not know how dollars looks, so I am guessing ;) )

Filipe Calvario (from Brazil) said...

Don't know American coins, but I presume they've got some year in them. Nah, nothing to do with that.

crf said...

FIVE
cents.
Or:

14 + 5*16 + 1*16*16 + 15*16*16*16 = 61790 CENTS.

Where FIE are standard symbols for base 16 notation and V is translated from Roman numerals to 5, and used as base sixteen.

Note this when you tip your waiter.

Anonymous said...

on the other hand, the lowest value in numbers is clearly the Indian quarter eagle - numbers 2 1/2 incuse

jah

Anonymous said...

plays on letters can't be based on ONE or Five or Ten or fifty because these words all appear on multiple coins, not just one kind

now, if it were denominator and not denomination, that would be 200 as in 1/200 on the half cent

i suppose it would help if i were a mathematician
jah