Question 5149: why doesn't this work??? there's a bunch of us in denver, colorado that are perplexed!!! :)
3 fellows go into a hotel. The desk clerk tells them that it will be $30 for the night, so each one pays $10 and they head off to the room for the night. Shortly after, the manager reminds the desk clerk that they are running a special that night, and it's only $25 for the room. The desk clerk pulls out five singles and gives them to the bell boy to return to the fellows. On the way up to the room, the bell boy realizes that it will be impossible to evenly split the $5, so he takes $2 for himself. Once he gets to the room, he explains to the fellows what happened, and returns the $3, one for each fellow. This means that each fellow paid $9 for the room.
Now, add it back up.
They each paid $9. 9 times 3 is 27. The bell boy took $2, that makes 29. Where is the extra dollar?
any explanations??? THANKS!
Answer by longjonsilver(2297)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! this is a classic question asked of accountants and mathematicians, most of whom just jibber quietly in the corner of the room and question their whole mathematical ethos.
Anyway, lol...
the 3 fellows paid $30..each paid £10.
The hotel then returns $5, so it is saying the bill should have been $25 (where each has therefore paid 25/3 --> $8.333).
The bell boy kept 2 of the returning funds, which means that he handed back 1 each, so that means we have:
in total, 25 in the till, 2 to the bell boy and 3 to the fellows = 30
or individually, for the fellows: each paid $8.333 (NOT $9 each) and received back $1 --> $9.333 which is $28 between them and the other 2 to the bellboy.
The point is...DO NOT confuse the overall amounts with the individual amounts: the fellows DID NOT pay $9 each, as much as it looks like they did. This is how easy it is to confuse anyone - hence why embezzlement occurs so easily :-)
jon.
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