Solution: Product Paradox
Product Paradox challenged students to solve the following paradoxical scenario: Two students each pick four whole numbers less than 10 and multiply them to find the product. Although the chosen numbers are not all identical, the products are the same. There are many possible solutions for this puzzle. Since zero is a whole number, any set of four numbers containing zero will produce the same product, zero (e. g. 0, 1,2,3 and 0, 4,5,6). In addition, since one times eight has the same product as two times four, sets that contain these two pairs plus two other identical numbers (like 1,8,3,5) and (2,4,3,5) have the same product. Likewise, one and six and two and three have the same product, so sets like 1,6,7,8 and 2,3,7,8 have the same product.