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To get back to where he started, he has to go
south? Marina
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 4:48
PM
Subject: Puzzler of the week
This week's puzzler:
While we were
way up north this fall looking at the New England foliage, we visited our
friend, Doug Mayer. He said, "There's a road right near my house that runs
directly north and south."
I said, "Yeah? Show me."
And Mayer
says, "I can put my car on this road and point it north, and drive for a mile
and when I'm done, I'm a mile south of where I started."
The question
is very simple: How's he doing it?
Last week's
puzzler:
The owner of a record store hires a pimply faced,
high-school kid to work on Saturdays.
He says to the kid, "You know
what to do. But I got one little extra thing for you. I’ve got two piles
of used 45-PM records that I’m selling for my friend Sam. Each pile consists
of 30 records.
"The records in the first pile are two for a buck. The
other pile is three for a buck. I don’t want you to put the money in the
register. I’ve got to give it to Sam. Put the money into the cigar box under
the counter."
At the end of the first day, the owner comes back to the
store, finds that all of the records have been sold and there is $25 in the
cigar box. The two-for-a-dollar records sold for a total of $15, and the
three-for-a-dollar records sold for a total for ten bucks.
Encouraged
by the rapid sales, the next week Sam shows up with 60 more
records.
The owner gives the kid the same instructions. This time, the
kid says, "I noticed last week that people were taking two records from one
pile and three records from another pile, so I decided that this week I’m
going to sell five for two bucks."
The fellow who owns the record store
says, "Seems like a good idea."
At the end of the day, though, the
owner opens the cigar box and there’s $24 in there. He says, "You’re
missing a dollar!"
The kid says, "No, I sold all the
records."
And that’s the question. Where’s the missing
dollar?
Last week's puzzler answer:
In the record sale in
Week #1, the records in the pile marked 2 for $1 were priced at 50 cents each.
And the records in the pile marked 3 for $1 were priced at 33.33 cents each.
In the record sale in Week #2, the records were all marked 5
for $2, which averages out to 40 cents per record. And that average price is
the problem.
Because if you averaged the price of the records
for sale in Week #1, the true average is 41.67 cents.
To make $25 in
the record sales in Week #2, the clerk should have priced the records at 5 for
$2.08 to reach a total sales figure of $25.
_______________________
Scott MacLean
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ: 9184011
http://www.nerosoft.com
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