A bat and a ball cost...

[fafster]

Some Critical thinking questions for you lot!

 

 

1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.

How much does the ball cost?

 

2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take

100 machines to make 100 widgets?

 

3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size.

If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it

take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

[webman]

Depends on the exchange rate of USD to GBP.

[silver]

1. 5 cents

2. 5 Mins

3. 47 days

[localzuk]

Curses! Silver beat me to it!

[fafster]

I'm quite pleased that I got all answers correct when I initially did it.

 

During the last coffee break I asked the office staff the questions, but they had all questions wrong. For example, they went for the intuitive '10 cents' for the first question before stopping to think about it.

 

I wonder if there's a correlation between results for this test and the occupation of the one doing it. As a techie, I have to do a lot of rational analysis daily, so I'm probably just trained to think that way.

[silver]

That's the point of these things - they all have an 'obvious' answer which is in fact wrong.

I must admit, the only one that just leapt, correct into my mind was the second one, I had to think about the others

[Ketlane]

"To every problem there is a solution which is simple, obvious - and wrong" - Einstein

[fafster]

That's the point of these things - they all have an 'obvious' answer which is in fact wrong.

I must admit, the only one that just leapt, correct into my mind was the second one, I had to think about the others

 

The third one did that to me, but maybe because I spent three years with binary notation in university...

 

Oh, and about that third one: If the initial lily-pad was 0.01m^2, then the after 48 iterations the resulting mass would be about thirty times the surface area of Saturn.