Countdown

Yesterday evening, during my relaxing time, I watched an episode of 8 out of 10 cats does countdown.

If you are not familiar with the series, it is a bunch of comedians (sometimes) doing smart things with numbers and words.  Funny and intellectually stimulating -- the perfect match.  (Occasionally there are some more mature jokes, so I wouldn't show it to the younger children without previewing it first.)

One of the regular number games they do is that they are given several random numbers and, using basic mathematical operations, have to make another given random number.  Just to make it even tougher, they only have 30 seconds to do it in.

I try to play along at home, but mostly I never get it.  With some of the panelists, their numeracy skills are both impressive and inspiring.

But yesterday, I actually got one (!!!), and happily Miya happened to be sitting with me at the time and I was able to (hopefully) impress her.

These are the numbers they (we) were given (at 26:19 into the video):

100, 8, 6, 6, 4, 2

And they had to make 162.

Can you do it?  There are several possible answers.

Within the 30 seconds, I got:

8(6+6-4)-2+100=162

I paused the video, and stepped Miya through it, getting her to do all the addition and subtraction.

Miya then wrote down the numbers and took them to Mama and Mulan to do.

Mulan sat for a few minutes and got:

2*100-4*8-6=162

Within a couple of minutes Mama got:

100*2-6*8+6+4=162

and then:

8*6+4*2+6+100=162

UPDATE 18/11/2016: A few times now, Mulan has asked to do more of these; she says they are fun.