MATHEMATICAL QUANDRY - CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS?

[toffeeboy]

You may have heard this before, but it still baffles me. There's some really clever people in here, so if anyone can finally explain this to me satisfactorily then I'd be very grateful! 

Quite a few years ago, John, Matt & Otto were on their way to a meeting, when they get held up in bad weather and decide to stop at a B&B overnight.  The receptionist isn't there, so a janitor takes their reservations. "£10 per night" he says, and takes £10 from each of them.  They get their room keys, and go to their rooms.

Meanwhile, the receiptionist returns and says to the janitor that there's a discount on Wednesdays, and the total price for a 3 room booking is only £25.00.  She gives the janitor £5.00 and asks him to return it to Matt, John & Otto.

Now, the greedy janitor quite correctly works out that £5.00 divided by 3 does not go, so he decides to give £1.00 to Matt, £1.00 to John, and £1.00 to Otto - and pockets £2.00 for himself.

That means that Matt, John and Otto have paid £9.00 each for their rooms, right?

3 x £9.00 = £27.00.

The janitor has £2.00 in his pocket, making £29.00 - so where is the missing pound?

[jomac]

HUH easy

[oldcomps]

Agree simple, it’s just like one I was told years ago.

An old Arab dies and leaves his only worldly goods to his three sons. His 17 camels, he wanted his eldest to have ½ the second to have 1/3 and the youngest 1/9.

When they came to share out the camels they realised they had a problem, as they could not give the eldest ½ as it would mean killing a camel and this was not acceptable. The elders said they would sort it for them and drew a camel in the sand.

They now had 18 so they said ½ 18 = 9 and give them to the eldest now 1/3 of 18 is 6 and gave these to the second son. The youngest said its not fair I get a drawing, the elders said don’t worry 1/9 of 18 is 2 and rubbed out the drawing as 9+6+2 = 17 so we dont need that one.

[jomac]

Perzactly..!!

Toffeeboy wants to have a seperate section, just posting stuff like this, i said it was possible and its created, he wants to have replies AND not postings