Tuesday, March 11, 2008

How can this be?

Three men check into a hotel room.
The bell hop says "That will be $30."
Each man gladly pays $10.
The bell hop reports to the hotel manager with the fee for the night.
The hotel manger says, "This is a mistake. Today is Tuesday, and the fee is only $25."
The hotel manager gives the bell hop 5 one dollar bills and tells him to return it to the gentlemen.
On the way back to the room the bell hop decides that he can not split the refund evenly 3 ways.
So, he keeps two dollars for himself and gives each of the men a dollar bill.
So, each man paid $9 for his stay. Three times 9 is 27. The bell hop kept 2 dollars for himself which equals 29.
There is a dollar missing.
HOW CAN THIS BE?

You can all thanks John Dukes for this one!

2 comments:

Jenn said...

Do you really want the explanation? It's equal to a sale where, for example, you get 20% and than an additional 10% off. It's not a total of 30%. Anyway, each man should not have paid $9, they should have paid $8.33. It's just the way the money was handled. Not sure if I'm making any sense, but I have to say, it did throw me!!

kiki said...

it's the wrong math problem to try and figure out how 27+2 = 30. The real problem is 27-2=25 (the amount the store owner has now)


I have to say, I love how the poster above didn't need any silly algebra to figure this out.
She just needed her experience shopping sales.
That's awesome.