# Thread: can maths be beaten?

1. ## can maths be beaten?

a few of my friends were talking about maths at lunch today, and tom said that maths can be beaten, and i wanted to find out here.

thank you

mcmahon

2. Originally Posted by McMahon
a few of my friends were talking about maths at lunch today, and tom said that maths can be beaten, and i wanted to find out here.

thank you

mcmahon
what do you mean? Are you asking if you can do something that disagrees with math? In that case, no. What math says is true, is true.

3. Originally Posted by McMahon
a few of my friends were talking about maths at lunch today, and tom said that maths can be beaten, and i wanted to find out here.

thank you

mcmahon
No Maths generaly deals with what we hope are irrefutable deductions
from premises. If the premis is false, then the conclusion does not necessarily
hold, but that is not a failure of Maths.

RonL

4. Originally Posted by McMahon
a few of my friends were talking about maths at lunch today, and tom said that maths can be beaten, and i wanted to find out here.

thank you

mcmahon
What the two posters said before me is true. The beauty of math is that is is universally accepted by everyone, unlike science. But math can be beaten in a sense that some problems have no solutions to them. So as a formula that solves any equation fails to exists (but it can be shown that such a formula fails to exists )

5. I was once working on a job where a worker passed around the old chestnut about the 'missing dollar'. He had everyone stumped and actually believed that the error was in the math itself. Proof was this old problem, not that he was too daft to understand why it worked the way it did.

Heads were too hard to convince him that it was a trick. "No, there's error in numbers ", he said. Can you believe that?.

In case, you don't what riddle I mean, here it is:

"Three business executives eat lunch in a restaurant. They estimate that the bill should come to $30. They split the bill 3 ways and pay 10 dollars each. When the actual bill comes, it is$25. Since this is not divisible by three, they each take a

dollar back and leave the extra two dollars tip for the waiter. Since each paid nine dollars and nine times three is 27, plus

two for the waiter is 29. Where did the other dollar go? "

Trying to explain this was an effort on futility. "NO!, there's error in numbers". It had me aggravated that anyone could be that thick-headed.

6. Originally Posted by galactus
I was once working on a job where a worker passed around the old chestnut about the 'missing dollar'. He had everyone stumped and actually believed that the error was in the math itself. Proof was this old problem, not that he was too daft to understand why it worked the way it did.

Heads were too hard to convince him that it was a trick. "No, there's error in numbers ", he said. Can you believe that?.

In case, you don't what riddle I mean, here it is:

"Three business executives eat lunch in a restaurant. They estimate that the bill should come to $30. They split the bill 3 ways and pay 10 dollars each. When the actual bill comes, it is$25. Since this is not divisible by three, they each take a

dollar back and leave the extra two dollars tip for the waiter. Since each paid nine dollars and nine times three is 27, plus

two for the waiter is 29. Where did the other dollar go? "

Trying to explain this was an effort on futility. "NO!, there's error in numbers". It had me aggravated that anyone could be that thick-headed.
Each paid 9 dollars and kept 1: 9*3 + 3 = 30

With due respect of ThePerfectHacker's disdain of all Mathematical methods used in Science, this is essentially a units problem. You can't add two numbers with different units. The problem is adding the amount paid and the amount left, two different units.

-Dan

7. Yes, I am aware of how it works Topsquark. I just wanted to relate a story.
This little problem has befuddled many, though.

While it is true that 9(3) + 2 is not equal to 30, it is true that 9(3) - 2 = 25, which is the correct way of looking at things.