*****************************************

Hey, do you like math puzzles?

If you're like me - you hate math puzzles.

They never really demonstrate any meaningful mathematical principles, 
they're just set up with a "gotch ya" to make you feel stupid.

And they're always presented by some condescending jerk who just wants to 
lord it over everybody as to how much smarter they are than you just because 
they know the answer to some stupid, meaningless riddle.

Man, some people.

*****************************************

So anyway, with that in mind here's a puzzle ...

Three salesmen come to town and they want to get rooms at the local hotel.

But there's a convention in town and the hotel is booked up.

The desk clerk tells them he only has one room left for $30 / night, if they 
want to, they could share that.

They don't see any choice, so they decide to do that and each pays $10 and 
they go up to the room.

Later, the night manager comes on duty and says, gee, these guys are being 
really nice about this, I'll give them a discount to show them how much we 
appreciate their inconvenience.

So he gives $5 to the bellboy and tells him to take it up to the three men.

On his way up to the room, the bellboy thinks - you can't divide $5 evenly 
by three - so he decides to keep $2 for himself and only give them $3 back - 
which he does.

Now that means that each of the three men has actually paid $9 a piece for 
the room ($10 they each paid minus the $1 they each got back).

So three times $9 is $27.

When you add back in the $2 the bellboy kept you only get $29.
($27 + $2 = $29)

What happened to the thirtieth dollar?


(I'll tell you next week, but if you go crazy and need to know sooner, email 
me and I'll tell you right away :-)

Be sure to show your work :-)