An old problem!

Ok, this is an old one:

3 friends hire a room at a hotel, wish they each have to pay 10$ for. So that the total price for the room will be 30$.
But then the owner of the hotel discovers that their room just costs 25$.
So he orders the piccolo to go up to their room to give the 5$ back.
But this is a kind of clever piccolo, who understands that it will not be possible to split 5$ on 3 persons. So he decides to give the 3 friends a dollar each and then keep the rest, 2$ for him self.

Ok, that's fine, but if we think a little about this we'll find a verry strange thing.

The 3 friends have payed 9$ each, and the piccolo took 2$, but there was 30$ in the beginning. So what happened to that missing dollar?

Enjoy!

Have you ever learnt maths in school...

OK, this is not hard!
But the point is that some people tend to do a caculating misstake the first time they see this problem! I'm one of them! But after some thinking, when you've switched of the autopilot you ofcourse get i right!

Am I the only one who got this experince when i first saw this problem?

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Am I the only one who got this experince when i first saw this problem?

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Chances are most people know this one, so its not very exciting to see people post the same things again :)

yes, kind of old, and if someone who hasnt seen the problem has scrolled down this far, they are probably looking for the answer.

watch the '0's...

Code:

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0000000000
0000000000
0000000000

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this is the $10 each person payed for the room. but now the room only cost $25. so we have to take $5 out.

Code:

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00000000  00
00000000  00
000000000  0

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then each customer is given $1 back.

Code:

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00000000      0    0
00000000      0    0
000000000          0

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you see where the mistake is made in the telling of the story? in actuality, 2 of the customers only payed $8 for the hotel. the other payed $9, but because of the way the piccolo handled it (by keeping the extra dollar of each of the $8 customers) the customers had no way to tell.

so it is not, as the story would have you to believe:

9 + 9 + 9 + 2 = 29

but rather:

8 + 8 + 9 + 5 = 30

or, if you want to let the piccolo keep his $2 tip:

9 + 9 + 10 + 2 = 30

yeah this is one ive heard before. lets see something original please.

Give him a break - it's still an interesting puzzle.

And to be fair, I've never seen it told with a "piccolo" before...

it is an interesting puzzle, but a common puzzle as well. i havent seen it with piccolo either. but ill be nice and give him a break.

>>> i havent seen it with piccolo either

A piccolo or picoline is a semislang semiofficial job title in Scandinavia. They're gophers basically.

That's basically what I assumed - I just thought I'd add that anyways

Actually, a clearer way to analyze the problem is this:

When the owner discovered his mistake, the original transaction was voided. It essentially ceased to exist. Because of the dishonesty of the piccolo, what actually occured was this.

3 x 9 = 25 + 2

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Originally posted by Govtcheez

And to be fair, I've never seen it told with a "piccolo" before...

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That's great...
I'll just make a new post with a teacher instead of the piccolo, because you think it's not fair... And you can delete it later:D !