The Tree Farmer's Daughter

Once upon a time there was a tree farmer. The farmer and his wife had a strapping son and a feisty daughter. The farmer and his wife loved their children equally, but the son was the mother's favorite and the father loved his daughter most of all. One day the farmer brought home a radio, because trees grow slowly and there isn't always a lot to do on a tree farm. The mother and her son loved to listen to the new radio. The farmer's daughter preferred to read books, but she loved the radio itself. How did it work? she wondered. One day the farmer's wife was horrified when she discovered her daughter had taken the radio completely apart. After a while, the daughter had the radio put back together again, and everyone was delighted. One sunny day, after several days of stormy weather, the tree farmer and his children went to the woods to turn trees that had fallen over under their own weight and with the help of the wind into firewood. The farmer took his son and daughter and a long iron bar to where a tree had fallen near a large rock. Then he said, "The first one of you to bend this bar or move that rock may go home and listen to the radio instead of helping me harvest trees." The farmer's son grabbed the bar and tried to bend it. But he was not strong enough. Then he raced over to the rock and tried to move it, but the rock was too heavy and wouldn't budge. After her brother had worn himself out, the farmer's daughter took the iron bar, placed one end under the rock and rested the bar on top of the tree that had fallen over. Then she grabbed hold of the other end, lifted herself off the ground, and dangled on the end of bar as the rock began to move. The farmer smiled as he watched his daughter run home to take the radio apart again.

Quiz

• Listening to a radio is to using a calculator to do math as putting a radio together is to . . . ?
• Doing math by hand is to trying to move a rock by brute force as programming a computer to do math is to . . . ?