TEST YOUR IQ with this simple task from Leo Tolstoy! :)
 

Task for the second class of the church parochial schools in Russia created by Leo Tolstoy
Today only 30 % of senior pupils, only 20 % of students of HIGH SCHOOLS and only 10 % of workers of banks and credit establishments can
solve correctly solve this task.

The seller sells a cap. Costs 10 rubles. The buyer approaches, try on and agree to take. But he has only 25 rubles. The seller sends a
boy with these 25 rubles to the neighbor to exchange. The boy comes back and gives 10+10+5 rubles.

The seller gives a cap and a 15 roubles change. Through some time the neighbor comes and speaks that the 25 rubles were false and
demands to give her money back. What to do..? The seller opens cash desk and returns her the money.

A question: on how many was deceived the seller?

1 minute is given on the decision.

hahaha

oops

i didn't even read the thread, it said choose a # so I did

25?
Iqtests suck anyway.. did it once and had ~140.. Im a lot smarter :Graucho

EDIT: Okay i think its 50... 10(cap)+15(exchange)+25(gives to neighboor)

35

I'm the only who answered 50?
I must be dumber than I thought.

I'm guessing 50.

It can't be 25 (since that would most likely be the "Average Joe" answer).

Probably can't be 15, and 35 is a maybe, but I'll go with my intuition and go 50.

It took me like 30 seconds to fully translate the Engrish to English.

i'll post the correct answer at the end of the day.

will see how smart is the webmaster community :)

i just call is iq test, actually this is just a very simple but nice task and it kicks ass! :glugglug

P.S. i'm sorry for the translation, original text was in russian

25

from what i see it should be 35

25 that he needs to give the neighbor back + the 10 rubles cap that he basicly sold for nothing

makes it 35

if i'm wrong then it got lost in translation

15 rubles and a cap.

He got 25 rubles from the neighbour and gave those back again, so that part can be ignored (the 25 fake rubles can be seen as non-money). It would be the same if he would just have had the change himself.

Apart from that, he gave 15 rubles and the cap to the "buyer", those are the things he actually lost.

Now, 25 rubles would be the wrong answer, since "10 rubles" and "a cap" are not the same thing - especially since only an idiot storekeeper would have paid the same price as he's selling the cap for.

So, the answer of what he actually lost in rubles is:
15 rubles + (10 - (markup on the cap))

Leo tolstoy really is one smart guy .

I don't get how people can answer more than 25 rupels... Overall, there is 1 fake 25 rupels bill. Whoever is in possession is losing 25 rupels. Everything else simply does not matter. All that matters in the end, is that the vendor is stuck with a fake 25 rupels bill, and this is how much he lost. Someone would care to explain to me how you get to 35 or 50 rupels?

The neighbour who first gets fake money, then gives real money and then gets real money confuses them, I think.

By the way, he doesn't lose 25 rubles, he loses the 15 rubles he gives as change plus the cap he was planning to sell for 10 rubles. A rather essential difference.

Well, you can still say he lost 25 ruples, because he could have sold 1000 caps that day and made a profit for all of them, it still does not matter in the fact that he got a 25 fake rupels bill and that this is lost money to him. Of course he still got a sale for one cap, but that is separate from the loss due to the fake money.

but overall he could simply pass that 25 rupels onto somebody else, and lose nothing, but that wouldn't be very nice of him to do so;)

25
15
cap

I don't see a 40 plus cap option there.

25
15
cap

I don't see a 40 plus cap option there.

You can't say he lost 25 ruples, because then you would be claiming that the value of merchandise already includes the markup, which really makes no sense.

The 10 rubles of the cap is theoretical, or potential, value. Compare it to when someone steals a lottery ticket from me before the actual drawing... that person stole the theoretical or potential value of the entire jackpot (after all, it could be the winning ticket), but without the actual drawing (or in this case, sale) the actual value is only the cost of the lottery ticket and perhaps the time/effort I spent buying it.

we have to assume that cap is worth 10 rupels, so your answer leads to 50 rupels... but you seem to forget that the neighboor gave 25 rupels to the vendor as well... so he lost only 25 rupels overall... the neighboor only claims back what he gave him in the first place. So the vendor does not lose money to the neighboor:)

well, if you calculate this way, you can assume that he lost 15 rupels, plus the cap, plus the lost profit on the sale, which would have added to 25 rupels overall. Because he otherwise would have sold that cap for 10 rupels to a client, so that profit is lost as well;-)

And you are forgetting the 15 in change the seller gave the buyer with the cap. :glugglug

There is no "lost profit on the sale", there is only "potential lost profit on the sale".

He might not have sold the cap at all, since actually selling what you want to sell is most definitely not a certainty.

no, this is exactly what the vendor lost, so it toals up to 25 rupels:-) what else did he lose? the 25 rupels he gave back to the neighboor? the neighboor had given it to him anyway, so he did not lose that:-) you just confirmed he lost 25 rupels:winkwink:

You guys are morons...its 50.

10 Cap
15 Change
25 Neighbor
=
50

well, that potential profit is lost because if the client had had a real 25 rupels bill, he would have sold that cap for 10 rupels, so this is no speculation:winkwink: anyway this is just to have a little fun with the problem, because I am pretty sure tolstoy did not intend for people to start speculating on if we should consider the cap a 10 rupel profit or if we should consider it less than that... he just wanted to know how much he lost considering the cap is worth 10 rupels... so the answer still remains 25 rupels:)

see my post above yours:)

No... these are the actual transactions that took place in chronological order:

Buyer => Seller: $0 (fake money)
Seller => Neighbour: $0 (fake money)
Neighbour => Seller: $25 (seller +25)
Seller => Buyer: $15 + cap (seller -15, seller -cap)
Seller => Neighbour: $25 (seller -25)

Summarized:
0 + 25 - 15 - x - 25 = -15 - x
(where 0 represents the original position and x is the cap)

Do you math again its 50.

re-read my post and punkwolrd's post above yours, and do your math again... then you'll get it :winkwink:

It's not 25. Pick one of the others. ;)

nice

Edit: So don't count the cap at all? It was free? wheeee

"A question: on how many was deceived the seller?"

Someone decypher this so I can give an accurate answer. :1orglaugh

You should do it again.

Look he gets 25 rubles from the neighbor.
Gives out the cap (10 rubles) and 15 rubles change
Thats 25 rubles that just went back out
The neighbor comes back a requests his 25 rubels and gets it.

Thats 50 rubels.

or even simpler:

- the neighboor did not gain anything nor lost anything, because he got his money back from the vendor (neighboor = 0)

-the buyer got 15 rupels and a cap while he had nothing to start with (if we consider fake money nothing) (buyer = +15 and a cap)

so with simple maths, vendor = -15 and a cap

So, nothing is lost and nothing is gained according to some physics law, so the vendor lost 15 rupels plus a cap... otherwise where would that additional 25 rupels would have disappeared?

It is speculation, precisely because the client did not have the real 25 ruble bill. Besides, the client's only reason for "paying 15 rubles" may have been than he was actually paying nothing. In fact, maybe he did have 25 rubles, but simply preferred not actually paying.

I don't like Tolstoy and his problem doesn't take into account the workings of the free market :winkwink:

Ofcourse, the intended answer is 25, but if you look at it on a deeper level that answer is wrong :glugglug

But the change he gave wasn't his to begin with. ;)~

What you're saying is that 25 comes in, 25 goes out, and another 25 goes out, and that amounts to a net loss of 50 rubles? What happened to the 25 that came in?

:glugglug

you just said it yourself:
why don't you include this in your equation?

That's why the change he gave is a loss. However, the money he got from the neighbour he simply gives back later.

Let's change the chronology of the actual exchanges:
The seller gets 25 rubles from his neighbour, then gives them back to his neighbour (now he is at 0 again), then he gives someone 15 rubles and a cap (net loss: 15 rubles and a cap).

well, so far 13% of the answers are 25 rupels... I guess tolstoy was right about this being challenging to some people:winkwink:

I know. I'm trying to figure out if the cap counts for $10. I would assume it does since it's multiple choice only.

but the simplest thing to do is to keep in mind that there is only 1 fake bill of 25 rupels, and if it had not been faked, nobody would have lost anything. So the only loss you can get in the end is the value of that 25 rupels bill. whoever is in possession of that bill lost 25 rupels, and that's as simple as it can get... just sucks for the vendor that he is the one stuck with it:1orglaugh

That's the flaw in this question :glugglug

I actually pressed the wrong thingy before I had entirely read the question, so 25 actually has another vote (a reluctant one, though, because of the flaw in the question :winkwink:).

Yeah I wasn't subtracting the 25...I am a moron..w00t w00t :Graucho

Well the question that we are trying to answer wasn't very clear anyhow.

I think I'm just plain dumb, nothing wrong with the question.

15

This part

"A question: on how many was deceived the seller?"

He was decieved of 2 things, cash and a hat. We have to just assume they are counting the hat as 10 to answer at all.