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Can you come up with a test to tell if three numbers go clockwise around a clock?

Asked by LostInParadise (31902points) May 14th, 2010

If I gave you the numbers 6, 10 and 3, you could tell by a simple visualization that you could go from the first to the second to the third by moving clockwise.

Suppose though that you wanted to do a simple arithmetical comparison of the numbers to determine if this is possible. I wanted to be able to do this without enumerating all the possible cases and without caring about which of the numbers is largest. Though not difficult, it turned out to be trickier than I thought it would be and my solution was different from what I originally had in mind.

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