Suugaku Joshi Gakuen Ep 7

I know that I'm really behind right now, but I'm slowly catching up one episode at a time, so let's go~

This episode starts off with Sayuri talking about how there are groups of first years that admire the older students such as the 4 girls from the Shibuya Police Squad who aspire to be like Mami, and the Gluttony girls who aspire to be like Fuyumi.

Nina also has her own fanclub called Team Nina, comprised of 3 girls named Hakkeijima Natsu, Daiba Aki and Maihama Haru. They look like 3 mini Ninas with the same clothes and hair and even eat Nina's favourite mentaiko bread too. They even try to imitate how Nina talks too. The male teacher notices the 3 and says that even though they admire Nina a lot, they should act like themselves, but Haru tells off the teacher in a Nina-esque way, getting praised by Natsu and Aki. The male teacher gives up and walks away. The 3 also have pictures of Nina that they walk around with. As they are heading to class, they end up noticing Nina just sleeping in the courtyard. Fangirl squee galore and debate whether they should talk to their most admired sempai.

The next day, Sayuri shows off her new smart phone. Kazuki replies saying that Sayuri loves to have new things. Nina doesn't care too much about it and Sayuri wonders why. The episode cuts to Team Nina where they are looking at their pictures of Nina and talking about her. They also wonder how can they get her cellphone number and email address. With their determination to get this information, they run over to Nina's class where they see Sayuri still trying to impress Nina with her smartphone and Nina is still not excited about it. Kazuki asks what kind of cellphone Nina uses, only to find out that she doesn't have one in the first place. Nina says that you don't need that fancy technology, but the truth comes out that she's just really bad with technology. She's had bad experiences where she can't seem to record her favourite shows or make photocopies. Everything seems to just "blow" up on her and stop working. ^_^" Kazuki and Sayuri can't stop laughing about it and dares to ask if she can use a computer. Nina says that once she touches a computer, it breaks. @.@ Team Nina can't believe that Nina knows nothing about how to use smart phones, tablets or even computers and says that Nina is so old-fashioned.

One of the Team Nina members comes to the conclusion that Nina is just not that great since she can't use technology and mentions that you can solve math problems using computers nowadays like probabilities. So Team Nina have come up with a plan that they'll battle Nina using technology. Team Nina challenges Nina to a battle, but Sayuri thinks this is a joke and tells them that they'll have to go through her first. But Team Nina retaliates, saying that Sayuri is not worth their time nor is she cute; she's just like an old lady. That riles up Sayuri for a bit. Team Nina ask Nina again and Nina accepts the challenge.

So the battle is a best of three where the team with 2 wins will be the victor. Both sides agree and Aki goes first to battle Nina. The first battle is speed calculation. Nina pulls out an abacus, while Aki pulls out a laptop with a number pad. It's a straight-forward addition problem of multiple strings of numbers. Nina is actually not moving too quickly with her calculations on the abacus, but Aki is going inhumanly fast on her numpad, where she gets the answer of 9,999,999,999 which is correct. Nina is shocked that Aki got the answer so quickly as she wasn't even halfway done. Sayuri says that you can't beat computers when it comes to simple calculations. 1 point for technology... I mean Team Nina. ^_^"

Natsu steps in for the second battle which is probabilities. Kazuki is not feeling too good about Nina winning at this rate, but Sayuri still has confidence in her. The problem is as follows: "In a class with 50 people, what percentage is the probability that there are people with the same birthday?" Nina pulls out a piece of paper, while Natsu types out her solution. Natsu finishes before Nina can finish writing her first line of solving the problem. Natsu comes up with the answer of 97% and is deemed correct.

Did Nina just write 365 over 365?! Well, that's useless. Anything divided by itself equals 1 and multiplying or dividing something by 1 does nothing.

Let's back up a second here. The question above asks the probability of 2 people in the 50-person class of having the same birthday. If that's the case, there is no way 97% can be the correct answer. So let's rewrite this question to the following: "In a class of 50 people, what is the probability, in percent, that no one else in the class has the same birthday as you?" The question written this way seems a lot more plausible to be 97% than the other way it was written.

So let's solve the re-written question:

There are 365 days in a year and only 1 of those days can be your birthday. Since we're looking for the probability of someone not having your birthday, we'll subtract 1 from 365 to get the following fraction: 364/365, which is days that are not your birthday over days of the entire year.

Since you're one of the 50 classmates, 1 will be subtracted from 50 to get the following fraction: 49/50, which is classmates that are not you over the # of students in the class.

So let's multiply these 2 fractions together: (364/365) x (49/50) = 0.977 --> 98%

Well, that's close to 97%, but not exactly. Let's try the probability of 2 people having the same birthday vs the rest of the class not having the same birthday: (364/365) x (48/50) = 0.957 --> 96%

Still not 97%. Either this question is flawed or I'm missing something. Let's move on to the next battle.

It seems that Nina has lost since Team Nina won 2 out of the 3 math problems, but the last question is always worth 3x the amount (according to the school's 300 year old tradition). Haru is up next. Here's the question: "It takes 20 minutes for a mosquito coil to burn out. Using a lighter, get 2 coils to burn out in 15 minutes!"

This is more of a math puzzle/brain teaser than a math question. Haru struggles with the question and decides to look up the answer on the internet. Nina decides to look at the problem from another angle and finds the solution. They actually explain the answer quite well in this episode, so here we go: light both of them at one end, and light the second coil at the other end. The second coil would burn out in 10 minutes (since you lit both sides). With the first coil, you light the unlit end, which makes the last 10 mins of burning into 5 mins. This gives a total of 15 mins to burn out both coils. It's explained so well that even Kazuki understood it. 

So Nina wins and Sayuri says that analog beats out digital. For puzzles like this yes, but technology does facilitate calculations and things like that, but I agree that you can't 100% rely on technology for everything. Team Nina is frustrated at the end now that they know that they are far from being able to beat Nina. The punishment in this episode is that they have to stop a stopwatch at exactly 3 seconds or a balloon will pop behind them. I guess it's a punishment for your ears and not knowing when it will pop could make you jump quite a bit. (And of course everyone screaming in the background and blocking their ears. ^_^")