Saturday, March 01, 2008

Math

From the Freakonomics blog, and yes, I got it wrong:

A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

A. $1.10
B. $0.10
C. $0.05
D. $1.00
E. $0.15

Hint: the answer is not B.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Is it .05 cents, that would be my guess. 1.05 + .05, it would be a dollar more.
Maybe if I was quickly glancing at it I would have guessed .10 though.

Cerulean Bill said...

Exactly. I kept thinking What? How can it NOT be...and then I did the math (oh,yeah, if its ten cents, the the bats just ninety cents more). I'm sure that theres an equation for this....

Unknown said...

I had to go looking for the .05!

One of those "trip you up" things. Like the the sentence that quickly reads fine, but isn't.

:-)
Carolyn Ann

Cerulean Bill said...

I would bet someone who is into the vagaries (i like that word, don't use it nearly enough) of intelligence and perception could tell you why that trips you up (not me of course, oh, no, I was just saying that to make Shannon happy so she'd tango with me)... and I'd be interested in knowing. I think things like that are fascinating.