Three poor farmers visit the big city for the first time. In the town, they visit a cheap hotel. The hotel owner is farmer-friendly: he has a room for 3 persons which costs only 30 dollars.

So, the farmers agree to pay $10 each. They pay and go to their room.

But then, the hotel owner realises that he has forgotten his super discount. The farmers only had to pay $25. So, he calls the bell-boy and tells him to give the farmers their $5 back.

But the bell-boy thinks: "You can't split 5 by 3 well. If I give them their $5, they'll probably have a fight." So he keeps $2 for himself and gives the other $3 to the farmers.

Now, the farmers each paid $9, that's $27 in total, and the bell boy kept $2. But together, that's $29!

What happened to the missing dollar?

LW is right. When you figure out what the farmers paid after the discount, only the three dollars that was returned to them was subtracted from the original $30. That makes $27 that they had paid. If you subtract the other two dollars that the bell boy took for himself, then you get $25, what the discount should have been. Then if you add what the bellboy took ($2) and what the farmers took ($3) you get $30. There were just some tricks played with the math.

Posted by Joe Roth on 2002-05-07 03:19:19