Ask Dr.

Math: FAQ

  The Missing Dollar  

Classic Problems || Dr. Math FAQ || About Dr. Math || Search Dr. Math || Dr. Math Home

Three men go to stay at a motel, and the man at the desk charges them $30.00 for a
room. They split the cost ten dollars each. Later the manager tells the desk man that he
overcharged the men, that the actual cost should have been $25.00. The manager gives the
bellboy $5.00 and tells him to give it to the men.

The bellboy, however, decides to cheat the men and pockets $2.00, giving each of the
men only one dollar.

Now each man has paid $9.00 to stay in the room and 3 x $9.00 = $27.00. The bellboy
has pocketed $2.00. $27.00 + $2.00 = $29.00 - so where is the missing $1.00?

This question has been sent to Dr. Math many times. Here's a sampler of answers from a
variety of 'math doctors':

1. From Doctor Ethan:

The problem is that the question is always cleverly phrased to conceal what is
really going on. Since I don't want to just give you the answer, I'll tell you how I
think about it and then you can see if you understand it.
 First let's locate all that money. There are two ways to think about how much
money is there, and the trick in this question is that it combines the two ways:

a. How much money did the men originally pay?

b. How much money did they end up paying?

For (a), we need to account for $30. The owner keeps $25, the bellboy gets $2,
and the men get $3 back. That adds up fine.

Now let's look at (b). How much money did the men end up paying? $27, of
which $25 went to the owner and $2 to the bellboy. That adds up too.

The problem with the question is that the $2 the bellboy gets is already contained
in the $27 that the men end up paying, so we shouldn't expect adding that $2 to
anything to be meaningful.

2. Dr. Rob says:

Since each man has now paid $9 for the room (3 x 9 = 27), and the bellboy has $2
in his pocket (27 - 2 = 25), the rest of the money is in the hotel till.

The trick is to realize that the $2 has to be subtracted from the $27, not added to it.

3. Dr. Wilkinson adds:

"...three nines are $27, plus the $2 which the bellboy got is $29. Where did
the extra dollar go?"

Be careful about accepting what you are told! The flaw is in the phrase "plus the
$2 which the bellboy got." This should not be added; it should be subtracted, since
the $2 the bellboy got is part of the $27 dollars the three men spent altogether. If
you subtract the $2 from the $27 you get the $25 that goes into the till.
4. Dr. Pete elaborates:

Write out a table:

Deskman Bellboy Men

----------------------------
$0 $0 $30 <-- men have not yet paid for room
$30 $0 $0 <-- men pay deskman
$25 $5 $0 <-- deskman pays bellboy
$25 $2 $3 <-- bellboy stiffs men
----------------------------
$25 $2 -$27 <-- what each group of people has
after all the transactions

Here, the last row is simply the difference between row 4 and row 1. In all but the
last row, the sum of the dollar values along each row is constant and equal to $30.
In the last row, the apparent fallacy is that the men and the bellboy should have 30
dollars between them, but this statement is false, as it obviously ignores the
question of what the deskman has. In fact, the correct statement about the last row
is that the sum of what the deskman and the bellboy have must equal the debt of
the three men.

The men have collectively paid 27 dollars for the room, which is obvious, since
the bellboy took $2 and the actual cost was $25. And so we see that there is no
missing dollar, because the $27 the men paid is a debt, written as a negative
number, and the $2 the bellboy took is a profit, which is a positive number, and
the sum is not $29, but a debt of $25, which was paid to the deskman.

To exaggerate the example, suppose the cost of the room is $5, the bellboy taking
$22, the men getting $3. Then it becomes clear that the $27 that the men wind up
paying for the room "plus" the $22 the bellboy takes just doesn't equal anything
meaningful. What's going on is that $22 of the $27 that the men pay has wound up
in the bellboy's pocket, so adding $22 to $27 is in essence counting the bellboy's
money twice.

5. Dr. Rothman numbers the dollars:

Let's give each of the $30 a number from 1-30, keep track of each individual
dollar, and see how the problem works.

Dollars numbered 1-30 are given to the manager. Then he wants to give $5 back,
so he keeps the dollars numbered 1-25, and gives numbers 26-30 to the bellboy in
 the form of a five dollar bill. The bellboy splits up the five to get 5 one's: numbers
26, 27, 28, 29 and 30. He gives numbers 26, 27 and 28 to the customers and keeps
numbers 29 and 30 for himself.

Ask Dr. Math: FAQ

  Coin Problems  
Classic Problems || Dr. Math FAQ || About Dr. Math || Search Dr. Math || Dr. Math Home

     
A common algebra problem often goes something like this:

Tony has 11 more nickels than quarters. How many coins does he have if the total
value of his coins is $2.65?
As with most algebra 'word problems', let's start by looking at what we know.

First, we are told that Tony has 11 more nickels than quarters. We can call the number of
quarters Tony has q. Then Tony must also have q + 11 nickels since he has 11 more
nickels than quarters.

We're also told that Tony has $2.65. To solve the problem, we need to know that a dollar
is 100 cents so $2.65 = 265 cents, a quarter is worth 25 cents (a quarter of a dollar), and a
nickel is worth 5 cents. We can now use the following equation:

    25 cents x no. of quarters + 5 cents x no. of nickels = 265 cents

Translating this into symbols:

25q + 5(q +11) = 265

25q + 5q + 55 = 265 (distributing)
30q + 55 = 265 (adding like terms)
30q = 210 (subtracting 55 from each side)
q = 7

Since q = the number of quarters Tony has, this means that Tony has 7 quarters. Since we
also know that Tony has 11 more nickels than quarters, he must have 7 + 11 = 18 nickels.

Thus Tony has a total of 7 quarters + 18 nickels = 25 coins.

 Ask Dr. Math: FAQ

  Flying Between Two Trains  

Classic Problems || Dr. Math FAQ || About Dr. Math || Search Dr. Math || Dr. Math Home

Two trains 150 miles apart are traveling toward each other along the same track. The first
train goes 60 miles per hour; the second train rushes along at 90 miles per hour. A fly is
hovering just above the nose of the first train. It buzzes from the first train to the second
train, turns around immediately, flies back to the first train, and turns around again. It
goes on flying back and forth between the two trains until they collide. If the fly's speed
is 120 miles per hour, how far will it travel?

We want to know the total distance that the fly covers, so let's use Distance = Rate * Time
to solve the problem. We already know the fly's rate of flight. If we can find the time that
the fly spends in the air, we can figure out how far it travels.

Ignore the fly for a minute, and concentrate on the trains. The first train is traveling at 60
miles/ hour and the second train is going 90 miles/ hour, so they are approaching each
other at 60 miles/ hour + 90 miles/ hour = 150 miles/ hour. Now we know the rate at
which the trains are closing in on each other and their distance apart (150 miles), so we
can find the time until they crash:

Distance = Rate * Time

Time = Distance / Rate
= (150 miles) / (150 miles/ hour)
= 1 hour.

The fly spends the same amount of time traveling as the trains. It goes 120 miles/ hour, so
in the one hour the trains take to collide, the fly will go 120 miles.
The solution above ignores the shape of the fly's path. To picture this shape, think of the
fly as a point made out of rubber. It's bouncing between the trains at a very high speed. As
the trains get closer and closer the bounces get shorter and shorter, until they are
microscopic. Even then, if you had a strong enough magnifying glass, you could still see
the bounces getting shorter. No matter how much you magnify, there will always be a
tinier bounce that you can't see.

You can analyze this path by combining the bounces into a series of round trips, from the
first train to the second and back again. It turns out that the length of each trip is a fraction
of the trip before. No matter how many times you multiply by a fraction, you will never
reach zero. The fly makes an infinite number of round trips, each one smaller than the
last.

We could use this information about the shape of the fly's path to solve this problem. We
might add the length of each of the fly's round trips, from the first train to the second and
back again. It's also possible to add up the time that each round trip requires, then use
Distance = Rate * Time to finish the problem. Of course, adding every term directly
would take forever. There are shorter methods for summing an infinite number of terms
in calculus and other branches of advanced mathematics. To use them, we would need to
find a pattern in the trip lengths. (Finding the pattern is the messy part!)

There's a famous story about John von Neumann, a physicist and mathematician:

Another mathematician knew the quick solution to the fly problem, and wanted to
see von Neumann struggle with it. He posed the question, and von Neumann
responded with the right answer in a few seconds.

"Interesting," said the first mathematician. "Most people try to sum the infinite
series."

"What do you mean?" von Neumann replied. "That's how I did it."

See Lee Bradley's presentation: the "von Neumann" way.

 Ask Dr. Math: FAQ

  Three Houses, Three Utilities  

Dr. Math FAQ || Classic Problems || Formulas || Search Dr. Math || Dr. Math Home

There are three houses and three utilities:

You must draw a line from each house to each utility, without the lines ever crossing.
Can you connect the houses to the utilities?

This problem is impossible. At least, it's impossible to connect the houses to the utilities
on a flat sheet of paper. In fact, it's impossible in the Euclidean plane (a flat sheet
stretched to infinity) and on most other two-dimensional surfaces. Some people have a
trick to get around the problem: they send a gas, water, or electric line through one of the
houses. Of course, real utility companies don't need tricks. The real world is three-
dimensional, so power lines can go over or under each other.

The three utilities puzzle can be solved on a special kind of two-dimensional surface. This
special place is the outside of a torus. A torus is shaped like a perfect doughnut, with a
hole in the middle. You can see a movie of a flat surface becoming a torus at Alexander
Bogomolny's page about Paper Strip Activities. Here's one solution:

A piece of paper with a hole in it is like a torus that has been squashed flat. This means
that the three utilities problem can also be solved by cutting a hole in the center of a piece
of paper. Lines are allowed to go around the sides of the paper, or through the hole to the
other side.

Why can't you connect the houses to the utilities on a normal sheet of paper? The
answer uses a branch of mathematics called graph theory. A graph is a collection of
points, which are called "nodes" or "vertices," connected by lines, which are called
"edges." A "planar graph" is a graph that can be drawn in a flat plane without any of the
edges crossing. We are trying to connect the houses to the utilities as a planar graph.
There are at least two ways to use graph theory to prove that the utilities problem is
impossible.

Using the Jordan Curve Theorem

Let's start by drawing lines

from some of the utilities to
some of the houses: gas ->
house 1 -> electricity ->
house 2 -> water -> house 3.
 If we draw one more line,
from house 3 to the gas
company, then we have a
loop. Notice that our loop
has an inside and an outside.

The Jordan Curve Theorem tells us that the loop will have an inside and an outside no
matter how we stretch or curve our lines, as long as they don't cross.

Now, we still have three lines left to draw: from house 1 to the water company, house 2 to
the gas company, and house 3 to the electric company. Because we don't want to cross the
lines we have already drawn, we have to choose whether to draw these new lines inside or
outside our loop.

That means two lines will

have to be either outside or
inside the loop. These two
lines will have to cross.

Using Euler's Formula

We have already seen vertices, or nodes, and edges: in our problem, the vertices are the
houses and utility companies, and the edges are the lines between them. Another
important object in graph theory is a "face." Faces in graph theory are a lot like the six
faces of a cube. They're the area inside a closed loop of edges. There can't be any vertices
in the middle of a face. Leonhard Euler found a formula to relate the number of faces,
edges, and vertices in a planar graph:

F - E + V = 2,

where F is the number of faces, E is the number of edges, and V is the number of vertices.
This formula counts the area outside the graph as one of the faces.

Now, let's pretend we have a solution to the utility problem. There are six vertices, one
for each house and utility company. Because each of the three utility companies is
connected to three houses, we have 3 * 3 = 9 edges. Let's see what we can figure out
about the faces.
We know that the boundary of every face is a closed loop of edges, and we know that
every edge goes between a house and a utility company. There's no reason to go from a
house to a utility and back to the same house.

That means the boundary of

a face could either be house
1 - utility 1 - house 2 -
utility 2 (four edges):

or house 1 - utility 1 - house

2 - utility 2 - house 3 -
utility 3 (six edges):

Now let's use Euler's formula to figure out how many faces there are:

F-E+V=2
F=2+E-V
=2+9-6
= 5 faces.

Every face has at least four edges, so the number of edges in all the faces is at least 4 * 5
= 20 edges. This counts each edge twice, because every edge is a boundary for two faces.
So, the smallest number of edges is 20 / 2 = 10 edges. However, we know that there are
only 9 edges! Since nothing can have nine edges and ten edges at the same time, drawing
a solution to the three utilities problem must be impossible.
 Ask Dr. Math: FAQ

   Age Word Problems  

Classic Problems || Dr. Math FAQ || About Dr. Math || Search Dr. Math || Dr. Math Home
A problem with one variable: How old is Al?
Many single-variable algebra word problems have to do with the relations between different
people's ages. For example:

Al's father is 45. He is 15 years older than twice Al's age. How old is Al?

We can begin by assigning a variable to what we're asked to find. Here this is Al's age, so let Al's
age = x.

We also know from the information given in the problem that 45 is 15 more than twice
Al's age. How can we translate this from words into mathematical symbols? What is
twice Al's age?

Well, Al's age is x, so twice Al's age is 2x, and 15 more than twice Al's age is 15 + 2x.
That equals 45, right? Now we have an equation in terms of one variable that we can
solve for x: 45 = 15 + 2x.

original statement of the problem:  45 = 15 + 2x

subtract 15 from each side: 30 = 2x

divide both sides by 2: 15 = x

Since x is Al's age and x = 15, this means that Al is 15 years old.

It's always a good idea to check our answer:

twice Al's age is 2 x 15:  30

15 more than 30 is 15 + 30:  45

This should be the age of Al's father, and it is.

Solving a problem using one or two variables: How old is Karen?

We can solve this problem using either one or two variables:

Karen is twice as old as Lori. Three years from now, the sum of their ages will be 42. How old is
Karen?

One-variable solution:

We'll let Lori's age be x. We can set up a chart:

 now in 3 years
Karen 2x 2x + 3
Lori x x + 3
The sum of their ages in 3 years will be 42, so we have:

(2x + 3) + (x + 3) = 42
3x + 6 = 42
3x = 36
x = 12
If Lori is 12, Karen is 24; in three years they will be 15 and 27, and the sum of their ages will be
42.

Two-variable solution:

If we want to use two variables to express the given information, we will need two
equations to solve for these variables. Here's an example:

Start by assigning variables. We want to find Karen's age, so let's call that K. But we need
a variable for Lori's age too, so we will call her age L.

We know that Karen is twice as old as Lori. Another way of saying this is that Karen's
age is 2 times Lori's age. This gives us our first equation: K = 2L.

We also know that:

a. in three years the sum of Karen's and Lori's ages will be 42;
b. in three years, Karen's age will be 3 more than it is now, or K + 3;
c. the same is true of Lori's age: in three years; it will be L + 3.

Since the sum of the girls' ages in three years is 42, we have our second equation: K + 3 +
L + 3 = 42.

simplify by adding the numbers:  K + L + 6 = 42

subtract 6 from each side:  K + L = 36

Now we have two equations in two variables:

1. K = 2L
2. K + L = 36

Since Equation 1 provides an expression for K in terms of L that needs no simplification,

we can plug the value for K in Equation 1 into the value for K in Equation 2: 2L + L = 36.

add like terms:  3L = 36

divide both sides by 3:  L = 12

Now we know that Lori is 12 years old, which makes Karen's age easy to find. All we need to do
is plug L = 12 into either Equation 1 or Equation 2 and solve for K:

Equation 1    Equation 2   

K = 2L    K + L = 36

K = 2 x 12    K + 12 = 36

K = 24  K = 24 

As we can see, Karen is 24 years old. It doesn't matter which equation we use, since the the
value for Karen's age must be the same in both cases.

Again, it's always a good idea to check our answer.

a. Karen is supposed to be twice as old as Lori. Karen is 24; Lori is 12. Is 24 twice 12? Yes.
b. In three years, the sum of Karen's and Lori's ages should be 42. In 3 years, Karen will be
24 + 3 = 27 years old. In 3 years, Lori will be 12 + 3 = 15 years old. Is the sum of 27 and 15
equal to 42? Yes.

We can see that we have found the correct answer.

Ask Dr. Math: FAQ

   The Birthday Problem  
Dr. Math FAQ || Classic Problems || Formulas || Search Dr. Math || Dr. Math Home

Suppose you flip a coin and bet that

it will come up tails. Since you are
equally likely to get heads or tails,
the probability of tails is 50%. This
means that if you try this bet often,
you should win about half the time.

What if somebody offered to bet

that at least two people in your
math class had the same
birthday? Would you take the
bet?

This question is more complicated than flipping a coin, because the chance of finding two
people with the same birthday depends on the number of people you ask. If there were
only one other person in your math class, you might be surprised to find out that she had
the same birthday as you. If there were a pair of people with the same birthday in a class
of 366 people, would you still be surprised?

How large must a class be to make the probability of finding two people with the
same birthday at least 50%?

Let's forget about leap year when we solve this problem (no February 29 birthdays!) This
way, we can assume that a year is always 365 days long.

Also, let's assume that a person has an equal chance of being born on any day of the year,
even though some birthdays may be slightly more likely than others. That will simpify the
math, without changing the result signficantly.

We'll start by figuring out the probability that two people have the same birthday.

The first person can have any birthday. That gives him 365 possible birthdays out
 of 365 days, so the probability of the first person having the "right" birthday is
365/365, or 100%.

The chance that the second person has the same birthday is 1/365. To find the
probability that both people have this birthday, we have to multiply their separate
probabilities. (365/365) * (1/365) = 1/365, or about 0.27%.

Now, what about three people?

The chance of the first and second person sharing a birthday is still 1/365. The
first and third person might share a birthday instead. The probability of that is
1/365 as well. But what if the second and third person shared a birthday? And
what if all three of them had the same birthday?

Things are getting complicated fast. Four or five people would be even messier. Is there a
simpler way?

To solve the birthday problem, we need to use one of the basic rules of probability: the
sum of the probability that an event will happen and the probability that the event won't
happen is always 1. (In other words, the chance that anything might or might not happen
is always 100%.) If we can work out the probability that no two people will have the
same birthday, we can use this rule to find the probability that two people will share a
birthday:

P(event happens) + P(event doesn't happen) = 1

P(two people share birthday) + P(no two people share birthday) = 1
P(two people share birthday) = 1 - P(no two people share birthday).

So, what is the probability that no two people will share a birthday?

Again, the first person can have any birthday. The second person's birthday has to
be different. There are 364 different days to choose from, so the chance that two
people have different birthdays is 364/365. That leaves 363 birthdays out of 365
open for the third person.

To find the probability that both the second person and the third person will have
different birthdays, we have to multiply:

      (365/365) * (364/365) * (363/365) = 132 132/133 225,

      which is about 99.18%.

If we want to know the probability that four people will all have different
 birthdays, we multiply again:

      (364/365) * (363/365) * (362/365) = 47 831 784/ 48 627 125,

      or about 98.36%.

We can keep on going the same way as long as we want. A formula for the probability
that n people have different birthdays is

((365-1)/365) * ((365-2)/365) * ((365-3)/365) * . . . * ((365-n+1)/365).

     If you know permutation notation, you can write this formula as

(365_P_n)/(365^n).

     That's the same as

365! / ((365-n)! * 365^n).

We've made some progress, but we still haven't answered the original question: how large
must a class be to make the probability of finding two people with the same birthday at
least 50%?

We know that the probability of finding at least two people with the same birthday is 1
minus the probability that everybody has a different birthday, and we know how to find
the probability that everybody has a different birthday for any number of people. The
easiest way to find the right class size is to use a calculator to try different numbers in the
formula. It turns out that the smallest class where the chance of finding two people with
the same birthday is more than 50% is... a class of 23 people. (The probability is about
50.73%.)

http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.liar.html