Long ago, there lived an old man with his three sons in a deserted village, located in the desert. He had 17 camels, and they were the main source of his income. He used to rent out camels as a means of shipping goods. One day, he passed away. He had left a will, leaving his assets for his three sons. After the funeral and the other obligations were over, the three sons read the will. While their father had divided all the property he had into three equal parts, he had divided the 17 camels in a different way. They were not shared equally among the three as 17 is an odd number that cannot be divided by 3.
The old man had stated that the eldest son will own half of the 17 camels, the middle one will get one-third of the 17 camels, and the youngest one will get his share of camels as one-ninth! All of them were stunned and questioned each other on how to divide the 17 camels. It is not possible to divide 17 camels and give half of the 17 camels to the eldest one. It is not possible also to divide the camels for the other two sons. They spent several days thinking of ways to divide the camels as mentioned in the will, but none could find the answer.
They finally took the issue to the wise man in their village. The wise man heard the problem and instantly found a solution. He asked them to bring all the 17 camels to him. After the sons brought the camels to the wise man, the wise man added one of his own camels and made the total number of camels 18.
Per the will, the eldest son got half the camels, which was 9 camels! That left 9 more camels.
The second son was assigned 1 / 3 of the total camels, so he got 6 camels. 1/3 of 18 = 6
The third son was assigned 1/9th of the total number of camels, which was 2 camels – 18 / 9 = 2
In total, there were 9 + 6 + 2 camels shared by the brothers, which counted to 17 camels.
Now, the one camel added by the wise man was taken back and the problem was solved. The wise man solved this problem with his intelligence.
Moral of the Story: Intelligence is nothing but finding a common ground to solve an issue. In short, every problem has a solution.