posted on October 8, 2000 09:32:51 PM new
3 traveling salesmen all decide to split a room for the night, the desk clerk tells them that the price is $30.00 so each salesman pays $10.00 and they go to their room. After they leave, the deskclerk remembers that they are running a special on rooms for $25.00 so he calls the bellhop and hands him 5 $1.00 bills and tells him to go to the salesmens room and split it evenly with them. On the way up to the room the bellhop figures that you can't split 5 evenly by 3 so he puts $2.00 in his pocket and upon arriving at the salesmens room he then hands each one a $1.00 bill. So that means that each salesman paid $9.00, $9.00 times 3 equals $27.00 plus the $2.00 that went into the bellhops pocket is $29.00, so what happened to the other dollar?
posted on October 8, 2000 11:17:27 PM new
I've got to say that this question has always more annoyed me than intrigued me
The problem is in the wording, and the wording is very very bad.
In reality, there is (of course!) no missing dollar. The $2 that the bellhop kept is *part* of the $27 that they spent. So it's just $27 + $3 in the end, which happily equals $30.
The entire bit about the bellhop is just to mislead and make you take that money into account, when in reality it was never part of the equation.
And incidentally, I'd rather the bellhop give me the $5 instead of thinking that it would be far too difficult for me to divide amongst 3 people on my own
posted on October 8, 2000 11:31:48 PM newkrs said "killjoy."
Yep, and in my spare time I steal lollipops from children and email friends telling them that no, Bill Gates isn't tracking their email and going to give them $1000 dollars for their efforts in spamming me....
I'm such a stick in the mud :P
<edited because I apparently have no idea how to bold names...not only am I a stick in the mud, I can't use UBB >
<reedited because I bothered to look it up..>
[ edited by tarisa on Oct 8, 2000 11:35 PM ]
