3 men are travelling across country, and stop in a cheap hotel for the night. They each have $10, and the cost of the hotel is $30 (whew, just enough!) After the three men pay, they go to their room for the night. The guy at the desk thinks to himself, "boy, they have a long way to go and I just took their last few dollars". With a big heart, he tells the bell boy to go return $5 to the three traveling men. As the bell boy is walking to their room with the $5, he thinks to himself, "there's three of them and they can't split 5 dollars evenly, I'll keep $2 of it and say we're returning $3 to them". Which is exactly what he does. So, the three men have paid $10, and were each returned $1 (10-1 = 9), meaning they paid a total of $27 for the night (9 X 3=27). Yet the bell boy only kept $2, and 27 + 2 equals $29. Where did the last dollar go?
Fun math riddle, hope you enjoy it, there is a real answer and at first glance this is kind of weird to think about I suppose.
Hope you like it.