[Lenovo]

Think about this one real hard:

There are these three people traveling cross country, as they are passing through one state, they begin to get tired, so they look for a hotel. When they find one, the manager tells them there is one room left, but it's a single room. The three of them decide to take the room anyway, so the manager charges them $30 for the room, they each pay $10. They get to the room and get settled in, and the manager thinks to himself "three people in one single room, I feel kind of bad, I guess I can give them a small refund." He calls the bellman over and says to him, "I'm giving those people that just checked in a $5 refund, so here, please take it up to them." On the way up to the room, the bell man is thinking, five dollars can't be split three ways, so he keeps $2 for himself and gives the remaining $3 to the three guests, which would mean they each basically paid $9 each for the room. So, $9 each times 3 people equals $27, plus the $2 the bellman has makes it $29. Where did the remaining dollar go?:confused:

[Wondergirl]

The solution is all over the Internet. From one site:

The answer comes from a logical fallacy: "This means that each man paid $9 for the room." Where did the $9 come from? It came from 30-3?3=9. Why on earth would you subtract $3, though? They were out $5. The math done properly should be 30-5?3=8.33. Replace the $9 with that number and the problem works out just fine (minus the penny we just lost in rounding down).

This means that each man paid $8.33 for the room. $8.33 times the three men is $25. Now add the $2 the bellboy took, plus the $3 that was returned to them and that is $30. There is no reason to add the $2 back in because it was in the $9 each of them paid.

[Lenovo]

Wow, I feel stupid

[Wondergirl]

But I bet you're darn cute!

[Lenovo]

I bet you I am, wait, woah, you hitting on me??

[Lenovo]

Forgive me, I been awake 22 hours. With two cups of coffee (extra strong) and a 20 oz bottle of coke cola in me, and working on my third cup of coffee.

[Wondergirl]

I probably could be your mother, or even your grandmother.

[Lenovo]

Riiiiiiiiiight I know u not my mother, cause she got this site blocked, and my grandmother not have computer.

[Wondergirl]

"could be" -- not "am"

[wickedimp]

The motto of this thread:
Always read the question carefully and 'think' for yourself, not accepting facts blindly.

[Capuchin]

Yes, it is a fairly simple and common 'problem'.

[galactus]

The first time I heard this riddle was on a construction site some years back. A foreman on the job stumped everyone with it. Even the engineers. His contention was not that it was a trick, but that there is, "an error in numbers". That is, math in itself is erroneous and here's the proof. The numbers themselves are intrinsically wrong, not the calculations. Can you believe that? DUH!! Trying to explain that this was a tricky worded problem proved to be futile.