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RE: Sophism #13: The Missing Dollar
This one is easy, if you express this in fractions it is evident those two alternatives are not equivalent:
301/3 + 301/2 != 60* 2/5
This one is easy, if you express this in fractions it is evident those two alternatives are not equivalent:
301/3 + 301/2 != 60* 2/5
I don't think expressing the computation in fractions "explains" the problem well enough here. It simply shows that the end results ($25 and $24) are different, which is also stated in the text anyway. The problem is in the (false) intuition that selling "2 per $1 and 3 per $1" must be equivalent to selling "5 per $2" in this particular situation.
(But in general it is not meant to be a complicated puzzle, indeed).