Dave Oosterhuis contributes this sign pair from Davenport, Iowa. It seems to be a fairly common practice for a math loving city to put multiple road signs on the freeways that show similar mathematical relationships (see Welcome To Omaha and Welcome to Albuquerque). Davenport joins in the fun but adds a little sprinkle of intrigue at the same time! See if you can find it.
These signs both take advantage of the somewhat controversial rule #4 that allows you to not use the numbers in the freeway designators because this is a mileage sign. This rule is currently under review and may change in the future.
Hard to miss the math on the right side. Basic, simple addition.
Same to be said for this sign, again, basic addition.
So did you see the intrigue? The sign on top indicates the distance from Northwest Blvd to Brady St as 2 miles, and the second sign shows it as 3 miles. It’s possible this is simply a mistake, or a bias in how rounding occurs to get to nice, round integers. However, it’s also possible that Iowa has perfected some sort of flux capacitor that makes the distance actually shorter one way. Alternatively, perhaps after thousands of years of eating spice Iowans are now able to bend roads, that is to go from Northwest Blvd to Brady St without moving.
These signs were found on I-80 north of Davenport, Iowa. The first sign is found eastbound and the second sign is found westbound. The GPS coordinates are approximately N41 36 12.9 W90 39 49.7. See sign on map!
Ed.: This is the 70th winner on Road Sign Math and ties Iowa for the 2nd position in the state competition with 7 signs each!
2 responses so far ↓
1 Adam // Oct 20, 2005 at 3:09 pm
2 Randy Weiss // Oct 20, 2005 at 10:13 pm
Glad to see the rule about using/not using the Highway #’s has come up for review. I knew there was a grey area there, but was afraid to push for clarification cause I was sure I would lose some of the signs I have posted. Till now I have been totally ignoring the idea of ignoring the Highway numbers. Every sign I have sent in has used ALL the numbers on the signs. Seems more pure that way.
I know this makes finding winners more difficult. Here in MASS, with our high pop. density, there are a ton of signs to sort thru looking for winners. From the trip we took in Wyoming I definately saw that we had to drive more miles per winning sign. Hey, that’s just the way it is.
Although I hate to move toward any rule that would reduce the number of winning signs (cause it is just so much dang fun to find one!), I still feel that if there was a vote to be given, I would vote to interpret the rule as "Use ALL the numbers on any sign."
– Randy Weiss
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