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chimera comments on Cognitive Style Tends To Predict Religious Conviction (psychcentral.com) - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: Incorrect 23 September 2011 06:28PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 23 September 2011 06:58:34PM 4 points [-]

A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

I really don't know how people can correctly answer this on the fly! I have to solve {bat + ball = 1.10, bat = 1 + ball} to get the correct answer.

Comment author: magfrump 23 September 2011 09:17:42PM *  3 points [-]

The way I started thinking about the problem is, you've got $1.10 to spend in total. $1 is spent on the difference between the bat and the ball. That leaves $.1 which is split evenly between the bat and the ball.

So what I end up doing is, as Tordmor says below:

1.10 - 1 = .10

.10 / 2 = .05

This is essentially the explanation given by wedrifid but I wrote it before reading his and tried to format it more consistently with your comment below.

Comment author: Zetetic 24 September 2011 06:16:51AM 1 point [-]

I'm a bit weird with these sorts of arithmetic questions, my thought process went something like this: "Ok, 10 cents seems close, but that puts the bat at 90 cents more than the ball.. oh it seems like 5 cents and 1.05 works." The answer just sort of pops into my head, not even thinking about the division step. Of course, I could do the simple maneuvering to get the answer, but it isn't what I naturally do. I think this has to do with how I did math in grade school: I would never learn the formulas (and on top of this I would often forget my calculator) so I would rather come up with some roundabout method for approximating various calculations (like getting the root of a number by guessing numbers that "seemed close" to the root, usually starting at 1/2 the number and adjusting). Probably not really the best way to do things since there are much cleaner solutions, but this bad habit of arithmetic has sort of stuck with me through my mathematics degree (though I of course have picked up the relevant formulas by now!); instead of using the straightforward formula, I do this mental jiggling around of values and it pops into my head.

I don't know, maybe that isn't weird at all, but in any event no one has mentioned doing it yet.

Comment author: juliawise 24 September 2011 01:34:50AM 1 point [-]

A friend tried this on three of us earlier tonight (having read the same report). One out of three (all agnostics) got it right on the fly.