I got it without any difficulty in my head by just removing the dollar from the equation and divided the difference by two. I then added the dollar back to that value.
To me, this was what was intuitive--not saying "$1" because that just seemed obviously wrong to me. Of course I don't know how much of this intuition was swayed by the fact that the article pretty much tells you it's a "trick" question, but since "$1" felt so wrong when I first looked at it, I think I would have gotten this one right without any problem even had the article not been written the way it was.
By the way, the question really isn't that much different from the typical questions of the type: "In five years, Billy will be twice as old as Sally. Sally is currently 3 years old. How old is Billy right now?"
I think the intent of these sort of questions is to reflect something about how the brain works, much like garden path sentences. The sentence, "The horse raced past the barn fell" is perfectly correct grammatically, but generally it takes a while to get it *because* of how the brain parses sentences syntactically.
Just use the given info to write a system of linear equations - two equations, two unknowns. It's straightforward, really.
ReplyDeleteI got it correct, but only because I was on alert for a potential trick question! :-)
ReplyDeleteI got it without any difficulty in my head by just removing the dollar from the equation and divided the difference by two. I then added the dollar back to that value.
ReplyDeleteTo me, this was what was intuitive--not saying "$1" because that just seemed obviously wrong to me. Of course I don't know how much of this intuition was swayed by the fact that the article pretty much tells you it's a "trick" question, but since "$1" felt so wrong when I first looked at it, I think I would have gotten this one right without any problem even had the article not been written the way it was.
By the way, the question really isn't that much different from the typical questions of the type: "In five years, Billy will be twice as old as Sally. Sally is currently 3 years old. How old is Billy right now?"
I think the intent of these sort of questions is to reflect something about how the brain works, much like garden path sentences. The sentence, "The horse raced past the barn fell" is perfectly correct grammatically, but generally it takes a while to get it *because* of how the brain parses sentences syntactically.
ReplyDelete