It's bugging me...
Three guy show up at a Motel at 2:00am...
dead tired and
can't go on without rest...
The desk clerk says that since it's so late and check out
time is 11:00 they can have one room with 2 double beds
for 30.00 bucks..
The guys say OK..and each one gives the desk clerk 10 dollars.
(10 times 3 = 30)...
In the morning with the manager came in and was going over
the nightly check in receipts he noticed the 3 guys and the
30 dollars..He told the clerk that he had overcharged the
3 men and that would hurt the motel's reputation so he told
the clerk to go to the room and refund 5 dollars to the men...
the clerk took 5 ones out of the till and headed for the room
but on the way he deduced that the 3 men had no idea they were
getting money back..so when he got to the room..he gave each
man 1 dollar back and explained that he had made a rate mistake
and he put the other 2 dollars in his pocket....
Now if each man now paid 9 dollars each instead of 10
that would be 9 times 3 = 27 dollars...
the desk clerk kept 2 dollars for himself..that's 29 dollars...
WHERE IS THE LAST DOLLAR OF THE 30 DOLLARS ORIGINALLY PAID ?????
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Here is the best answer at Yahoo! Answers:
You said the total was 3*(10-1)
which reduces to 30 - 3 and that reduces again to the total they spent which is $27. There is no missing dollar and each man did indeed pay $9.
It was just bad reasoning because the money the busboy stole is already figured in. You counted it twice to try to confuse people and put it in place of the $3 he returned that would otherwise make it add to $30.
I like this answer even better:
It is a mathematical error in reverse. You started the math with what the men paid to what was in the boy's pocket. Do it the right way and it works.
30 - 5 = 25 in the register
1+1+1 = 3 to each man
2 in the boy's pocket
25+3+2=30
I ran it through my tired ol' TI-34 calculator and it did not know the answer. Also have Microsoft Math and a quadratic equaion solver to help with messy math and they did not know either. It is a puzzlement. Think about it tomorrow. Maybe it will come to me in a dream.