plonq: (Cutting through the pooh)
[personal profile] plonq
This Mensa calendar seems to have one bad page per month.  I enjoy the little brain exercises every day, but ones like this drive me up the wall:

Eight chocolate bars plus six gumdrops cost 70¢.  You could buy seven gumdrops for the price of two chocolate bars.  How much change will you get back from $1.00 if you buy six of each?


The answer is: What fucking planet do these guys come from?  Let's just check their math.

8c + 6g = 70¢
7g = 2c ... 3.5g = c

Okay, now let's substitute.

8(3.5g) + 6g = 70¢ ... 28g + 6g = 70¢ ... 34g = 70¢

Unless I've done something wrong, 34 gumdrops cost 70¢

That means one gumdrop = 2.0588235294117647058823529411765¢

But hang on...

7g = 2c ... g = 2/7c
8c + 6(2/7c) = 70¢ ... 8c + 12/7c = 70¢ ... 68/7c = 70¢ ... 68c = $4.90

Therefore a chocolate bar costs 7.2058823529411764705882352941176¢

If you bought 6 gumdrops and 6 chocolate bars you would get 44.411764705882352941176470588242¢ back in change.

Their expected answer:

ANSWER: 46¢ (A chocolate bar costs 7¢; a gumdrop costs 2¢.)

Hmph.  They didn't say anything about rounding to the nearest cent in the original problem.
This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

April 2024

S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
14 151617181920
21222324252627
282930    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 30th, 2025 11:38 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios