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rubberbandage
I honestly cannot grasp how this could be a “predictor” of religious belief. Being confused by confusingly-crafted math-ish questions does not mean the rest of the world is perceived as a mystery too, and therefore religion is the answer to everything. I believe there is no god, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why the answer to the first question is “5¢” — could someone help me understand?
follownotrend
The ball can't be 10 cents, because 10 cent ball + 1.10 dollar bat = 1.20, and it'd exceed the total.

Since the difference is 1 dollar, we can do ball + ball + 1 dollar = 1.10, then we can see that 2(ball) = 10 cents, so 10/2 = 5 cents for the ball.

I think the questions gage whether or not the person's beliefs/thoughts/rightness come intuitively and they decide to settle, or they keep searching.

treehau5
This question seems like it came straight out of the book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.
dragonwriter
> I believe there is no god, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why the answer to the first question is “5¢” — could someone help me understand?

Question: "A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? ____cents"

Let b be the cost of the ball in cents. Then b + 100 is the cost of the bat in cents.

  b + (b + 100) = 110
  2b + 100 = 110
  2b = 10
  b = 5
QED.
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Vaskivo
Great. This type of ideas drive me nuts! Two remarks:

- Both me and my girlfried would be capable of answering correctly. I'm an atheist, she is catholic. We are both engineers. And we also played the first 4 Professor Layton games, where these puzzles appear (and many more. Highly recommended games!).

- It appears that the article has a "religious people are dumb" connotation. Which, from personal experience, is very far from the truth!

hughdbrown
Excellent. I am going to make sure my kids do not become religious by getting them to memorize the answers to these questions.
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