The answer is not 10 cents.
"And if an epitaph be my story, I'd have a short one ready for my own: I had a lover's quarrel with the world." -- Robert Frost
"And if an epitaph be my story, I'd have a short one ready for my own: I had a lover's quarrel with the world." -- Robert Frost
5 comments:
This is high school algebra stuff.
Total price is $1.10. The ball costs an unknown amount, x, and the bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. Therefore:
1.10 = x + (1 + x)
Which is simplified as:
1.10 = 2x + 1
Subtract the common integer (1) from both sides of the equation and you get:
.1 = 2x
Which means:
.05 = x
So the ball costs five cents.
What's the relevance?
The ball is free. The price of $1.10 reflects the following:
Bat: $1.00
Ball: $0.00
California Sales Tax: 10 cents
(This is based on San Francisco's sales tax of 9.5 percent. In some counties in California, the sales is lower.)
Am I correct? If yes, what is the prize?
Hello,
Here's the answer:
The bat: $1.05
The ball: .05
This means that the bat is exactly one dollar more than the ball. Hence, the total is $1.10.
-Genius Brain at Work
P.S. This answer deserves a major prize. However, if you're intimidated by my brain, I understand.
I like the "ball is free" answer. :-) I'm guessing this has something to do with general innumeracy. The instinct is to say the bat is $1 and the ball is 10 cents, without immediately realizing that the difference is 90 cents.
@Transplanted: There is no relevance to the law. I just copied a riddle I picked up from the wonderful book, _The Ascent of Money_ by Niall Ferguson. He uses the riddle to make a point about cognitive traps, and how most human beings are "hardwired" for fallibility. Thank you for the detailed explanation.
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