Mathematics bombshell, Rachel Riley, has been admitted to hospital suffering from fatigue after she attempted to calculate the profit margin on popcorn enjoyed by Vue Cinemas.
Riley, who excels at solving complicated maths problems on the TV gameshow Countdown, tackled the conundrum in order to flex her cerebral muscles to the maths world. Her bid ended in near disaster, however, when she felt faint and collapsed as the sheer vastness of the calculation overwhelmed her.
Vue Cinemas profit margin on popcorn is said to be ‘unsolvable’.
Former Countdown number cruncher, Carol Vorderman, almost died ten years ago when she attempted the same calculation. Riley believed that where Vorders failed, she would succeed, and ignored the warnings of other maths professors that the sum should remain ‘unsolved’.
Professor Thro Bing Dong, of the Chinese Mathematics Institute, proclaimed the problem impossible to calculate when he attempted it last year using a super computer. He added:
This number is too huge. Too big. It’s massive. Like your mum. No work out number!
When former I’m A Celeb contestant, Vorderman, attempted to work out Vue Cinema’s profit margin on popcorn ten years ago she slipped into a coma for two months. Doctors believed at the time she was entering a meditative state in order to let her subconscious work on the problem. They were wrong, and she’d just collapsed like an Arsenal defence.
Vue Cinemas itself doesn’t know the profit margin it makes on sales of its popcorn, as the number is said to be infinite. The only person believed to have been able to work out the number was Professor Stephen Hawking, but even he knew not try to solve something impossible.
