Having Fun with Organized Kissing: A Pedagogical Note

Abstract

Harbaugh’s daughter went to a French school at which every day before class, everyone in the class must kiss each other. It is easy to see that a class of 35 kids must engage in 595 kisses. Organizing the kissing for the purpose of time-saving and predicting how much time it would take are proposed in this pedagogical note inspired by the entertaining puzzle made by Harbaugh. We also illustrate how this problem-solving case study, requiring no mathematics but careful reasoning, might be incorporated in teaching undergraduate students majoring in economics or business.