Thursday, April 30, 2009

Thursday Classic Math Problem


For some reason, I've been spotting a lot of math puzzles around the Internets lately. Walt has had a few recently, and I'm gonna go ahead and steal one from Poz and put it up here. See if you dumbasses can figure it out:

Three sportswriters are in a minor league town for a game. They miss their flight out of town, so they have to crash at a hotel near the airport. One rather seedy looking hotel is offering a deal — $30 for a big room with two beds and a couch. They figure, what the hell, it’s 10 bucks apiece, you can’t beat that.

So they show up at the hotel and give the guy 30 bucks. Then, they get to talking, the guy turns out to be a big baseball fan, so he says: “Fellas, you know what? You can have the room for 25 bucks.”

Nice offer. The sportswriters say — “Great. Just give us a buck each and keep the other two for yourself.”

And that’s how it was.

So, explain this … if each sportswriter put in nine bucks ($27) and the hotel guy got two bucks ($27 + $2), where did the other dollar go?

Suck on that, SAT.

1 comment:

ChuckJerry said...

This is a good problem because it kindof makes your brain ooze out of your head until you realize the trick. Don't read this if you haven't thought about it for a while.

The $2 is actually included in the $27 and there is, obviously, no missing dollar.

The gies paid $25 for the room, which is $8.33 each, and they gave the guy $2, which is $0.67 each, totalling $9. (Pardon the stray penny here or there.)

So they each paid $9 and got $1 change from their $10 bill.