Where's the change?

RunDMC

Three men go to a hotel and decide to share a room. The room costs $30 per night, so they each leave $10 at reception and head upstairs.

Later the concierge recalls that tonight is the twenty-five-dollar special. He gives the bell hop exactly five one-dollar coins(/notes, depends on your currency!).

The bell hop arrives at the room and explains the special. The men realise there is no easy way to share the 5 coins between them, so they keep one dollar each and give the bell hop a $2 tip.

Later, one of the men exclaims: "Wait, we got $1 back each, right? Well, that means we paid $9 each for the room, right? (Our original $10 each minus the dollar we got back.) Now, three nines is 27, plus the $2 tip gives $29. Where'd the other dollar go!?!"

Where, indeed, did the extra dollar go?

Pengwuino

Oh this is so old :P

bomba923

I concur.
.

Pengwuino

Its fairly obvious that the 2nd man ate the money

ceptimus

Government tax.

tribdog

try thinking of it this way: 3 guys go to rent a room. it costs 25 a night. to make it even they each pay 9 dollars and say keep the change. 3*9=27total=25rent+2tip. they didn't pay 27+2.

Cybersteve

Must be a sign of the times, these 3 guys used to just go out for a meal, now they're sharing a room for the night!

dgoodpasture2005

It's easy! the question is set up to mislead you... it's really like this... 30$ is payed... 5$ is given back (now we're at 25$ payed) ... 3 dollars are kept (now we're at 28!) 2 dollar tip! wala... 30$... each man does not actually pay the even 9 dollars each :P... but where indeed... does that extra penny go? It's only 25 dollars for the room! Why would they each pay 9 dollars? :P 8.33X3 is 24.99, kept 3, 27.99, 2 tip... 29.99... where is the extra penny? haha i suck at my futile attempts to keep this going.

Imathinker

I am just a normal housewife.....no big education....but I would use the debit/credit theory....
debit.....$27 disbursed collectively from the 3 men

credit....$25 for the room and $2 tip.....

No extra dollar floating around

dav2008

It's on wolfram's bed

Alkatran

It's such an evil problem. They count the tip twice, it was already included in the 27$ and for some reason they add it again.

moose

Werd.
It's an easy problem :)

However, I should try to get some people with that type of logic....hmm

theCandyman

I was a bit perplexed a first, I was wondering why he added the two dollars to 27 when he should have been subtracting it to get the cost of the room. Funny, misleading the person like so; I wonder how many of my friends will fall for it?

Mk

So how do I explain this to everybody so I sound smart?