Talk:Missing dollar riddle

This article was nominated for deletion on July 23, 2005. The result of the discussion was to keep.

Vote for Deletion

This article survived a Vote for Deletion. The discussion can be found here. -Splash 03:27, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Explanation Confusing

So people get mixed up between the $3 the ladies got back and the $2 in the waiter's pocket. Happens all the time. Most people figure this kind of thing out and say "how could I have been so stupid." Seems like a rather involved explanation, which will only confuse people. I summed it up in one line at the end of the article.24.64.223.203 00:55, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Please fix link.

Clarity in its worst form...?

It is interesting how clarity has been proposed on this article, resulting in malformed english version of simple engineering questions. What makes this article work is not the myriad of solutions and explanations, but: a) how the misdirection works; b)what is the proper way to analyze circumstances where conservation is an issue, and; c) how the presentation deflects away from the proper analysis.

I am not perplexed that there are, and will always be, repeated attempts to offer english language solutions, as folks' internal analysis will be as varied as personalities. But I would like to suggest that the explanations offered digress from the real value of the article.

Before I change these new rounds of amendments to the article, perhaps some discussion is worthwhile...

Clarity comes from solution paths without declarative points

It is interesting that the current verbiage for the 'solution' begins with and continues with declarative statements. It is these declaratives that could become a source for misdirection and confusion! I disagree that there is redundancy. The solution explanation and technique that disappeared relies on engineering and/or accounting principles; the "solution path", i.e., the proper solution path, is what should be emphasized by the article, not just the fact that any number of equations can be written which may or may not be wrong.

(moved comment to bottom)

I think that it's too redundant, explaining the same things several times. I say go ahead if you think you can make it better; remember, be bold! | AndonicO ^{Talk · Sign Here} 17:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Article title

I'm concerned that the title to this page is wrong: it's not actually a paradox, and should not be defined as such. We all know a paradox when we see one: using one line of reasoning, a certain truth should hold, but the definition of the issue requires that that truth NOT hold, so we are left in a circle of reasoning. This isn't like that at all: it is simply an arithmetic error.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dac2chari (talk • contribs) 01:21, 20 April 2007 (UTC).

True, but it is usually called the missing dollar paradox, and we want to reflect the literature. It isn't our business to correct illogical terminology others use. --Sopoforic 08:46, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

An attempt to retrain intuition

Replace 30 with 3000, 10 with 1000, 25 with 2500, therefore 5 with 500, BUT 2 with 497, and therefore 9 with 999 and 27 with 2997, also noting that 3 is thus not replaced. Now you wouldn't add 2997+497 to account for the monies, and then wonder about the "extra" 494 (=3000-2997+497), would you? Does this help?

Ladies or Men?

Sometimes the article says ladies and sometimes it says men. That should be fixed. But which one should it be? -Monkey 13!!! 21:00, 2 January 2008 (UTC)