A Brain Teaser (or, Observations on My Professional Life)
Last year, when we were discussing where I would be likely to be assigned next, my husband made an interesting observation. He said I was due for a “K” base. Here are the bases I’ve been assigned to in chronological order:
Lackland (Basic Training/Tech School)
Malmstrom (Electronics Technician/Quality Control Evaluator)
Lackland (Basic Electronics Instructor)
Keflavik (Electronics Technician)
Ft. Meade (Electronics Technician/Implementation Engineer)
Lackland (Officer Trainee)
Maxwell (Information Management/Network Administration)
Manhattan College (ROTC Instructor)
Kelly (Director, Communication and Information/Commander, Warrior Bravo while deployed to Kuwait)
Langley (Chief, US&Allied Messaging/Watch Officer in Bahrain–the only letter that doesn’t fit/Division Chief)
Note the consistency in me being assigned to K-L-M bases? I’d never noticed it before, but he’s right. He just picked the wrong letter. Obviously, I was due for an “M” again, since I’m returning to Maxwell–as an instructor.
Upon closer examination, I really was due for an “M.” Can you see the pattern? What letter comes next and why?
L
M
L
K
M
L
M
M
K
L
M
?
Note: There is no right answer (I have no idea what my next assignment will be in three years or even if I will have one). There is no wrong answer, just reasonably defend your choice. I AM curious to see what answers people choose and why. Have fun.
This is an easy one. While it may at first appear to be random, upon deeper inspection you can see it is an inversion of a common Mersenne sequence. So let’s break it down into a numerical problem.
First we need to assign values to each of the letters. I’ve assigned a value based on the alphabetical occurrence of each letter with relation to placement within the sequence. Doing so creates an obvious pattern of peaks and valleys from which we can extrapolate our result.
lml kml mmk lm K
232 132 331 23 1
7 6 7 6
M is a constant, and as such, we can extrapolate that your next assignment will be a “K”. Of course, I’ve not factored in the variables for continuum fluctuation, resource expenditure, and/or spatial incongruities, but I’m confident that the results will remain consistent.