Answer:
Eldest brother = 18 camels
2nd brother = 12 camels
Youngest brother = 4 camels
Explanation:
Question posted:
How could we know how many camels actually correspond to each brother?
It is from "the man who calculated":
The question is incomplete without the background information.
Based on the question, It has to do with sharing an inheritance of 35 camels among 3 brothers.
"The man who calculated", by Malba Tahan.
Since the complete question isn't available, we are going to look at the following question to understand how to do the calculation.
Question:
How can an inheritance of 35 camels be divided among three brothers in such a way that the eldest brother gets half of them, the second one gets 1/3 of the total and the youngest brother gets 1/9 of the total camels?
Solution:
Total number of camels= 35
Eldest brother gets half: 1/2 of 35 gives a fraction and not an whole number
2nd brother = 1/3 of 35 (gives a fraction)
3rd brother = 1/9 of 35 (gives a fraction)
Since we can't have a camel in fraction except in whole number, we would look for the closest number to 35 that would be divided by 2, 3 and 9 respectively without giving a fraction.
Number 36 is the closest number to 35 that satisfies this condition.
1st brother = 1/2 × 36 = 18 camels
2nd brother = 1/3 × 36 = 12 camels
3rd brother = 1/9 × 36 = 4 camels
Now let's add the camels the 3 brother got together = 18 + 12 + 4 = 34 camels
Total camels - amount shared = 35 -34 = 1
Meaning one camel is remaining. The distributor would keep the remaining one as that's the way such distributions could be achieved.