The spelling thing does annoy me. Not to the level that it does some people, but I do find myself seriously questioning how people can spell simple words wrong on a conistent basis when they are on 1000s of posts/tweets/statuses on the very forums/social sites that they use with these very words spelled correctly.
The level when I get annoyed is when whole posts appear cryptic. I have friends on FB who insist on typing phonetically because they can't spell, it's hideous to try and read.
Russ146 said:
here's one for you
3 men have a meal in a restaurant and the bill comes to £30
each man pays £10
There is a mistake on the bill and they are given a refund of 5 £1 coins.
The waiter cant split the coins between 3 men so he puts £2 in his pocket and gives each man £1 coin back
Now each man has paid £9 and the waiter has £2
3 x £9 = £27 + £2 = £29.........
Where's the other £1 gone from the original £30?
I know the answer to that one as that was one of my favourite riddles from years back, so I'll leave it to someone else.
However Russ... you are wrong. The answer is 12. I can understand the reason you are coming to the conclusion of 18, but those 3 "equations" yield the same result... they have to.
There are rules in mathematics, other wise 2+1 could equal 1. There is structure to solving equations, otherwise 3 different people could get 3 different answers to the same problem... there IS only one answer to all of the 3 problems that I posted up.
I have explained the reasoning, I have explained the rule and I have named the BODMAS principle that is at the heart of the reasoning behind this entire problem. People have given their input resolutely standing by the BODMAS principle and how it applies to this simple "riddle". If you aren't on the wind up and you genuinely believe the answer is 18, then that is fine.. you just aren't very good at mathemtatics (and that's fine, I'm crap at French). I would suggest, however, that you at least Google BODMAS and try to grasp that the answer, as far as mathematics goes, is 12.