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sigur3



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PostPosted: 07/16/17 1:42 am    ::: A math riddle Reply Reply with quote

My apologies if you've seen this before. Even more apologies if this has been posted here before.

---

A guy walks into a store and steals a $100 bill from the register without the owner’s knowledge.

He then buys $70 worth of goods using the $100 bill and the owner gives $30 in change.

How much money did the owner lose?

A) $30
B) $70
C) $100
D) $130
E) $170
F) $200


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PostPosted: 07/16/17 2:42 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

F...store loses 200 bucks. Store loses the 100 already in the till. The 70 bucks of bought goods is nice, but it bought with stolen money so there should be 170 in the till. 30 goes out in change so that's another 30 bucks that leaves.


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PostPosted: 07/16/17 5:39 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

C) $100

(real-world answer: $100 minus the profit margin on the goods ... so more like $80)



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PostPosted: 07/16/17 9:48 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

G- None of the above.

$100.00 cash
+cost of stolen goods
+profit on those goods

Laughing



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Howee



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PostPosted: 07/16/17 10:02 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

C. (Mainly cuz "C" is typically the correct response in most multiple choice questions Laughing )

But. Also, if the guy had just taken the goods via shoplifting, the owner would only have been 'out' the price of the goods ($70). In this case, he also sent him home with an extra $30.



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pilight



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PostPosted: 07/16/17 10:51 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Inventory shrinkage and theft losses not covered by insurance are tax deductible, so the business isn't out the full $100. If the theft is covered by insurance then the business isn't out anything.

We need to know more about how the business is organized. If it's incorporated then the corporation eats the loss and the owner(s) aren't out anything.



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PostPosted: 07/16/17 4:26 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I assume we're supposed to ignore complications like profit margin and inventory replacement and cost of goods sold and overhead. So the answer is (C) $100.

The stolen hundred dollar bill is irrelevant because he got it back. His total loss is $70 in goods and the $30 in change, for a total of $100.


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PostPosted: 07/16/17 10:25 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

C

the answer is C


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PostPosted: 07/16/17 10:37 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

It depends on how literal the question is. Since it asked how much money the owner lost, I would say $30, as goods--though they do hold value--are not a form of currency (ie: money).



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GlennMacGrady



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PostPosted: 07/17/17 7:19 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

pilight wrote:
If it's incorporated then the corporation eats the loss and the owner(s) aren't out anything.


What do you mean by this?

If the corporation loses $100, there is that much less money to distribute to the owners as dividends (or as salaries). In addition, with fewer corporate assets, the value of the owners stock will go down.
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PostPosted: 07/17/17 2:50 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing

i'm thinking this thread should be renamed "How to Hyper-Analyze a Simple Problem" Razz



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PostPosted: 07/17/17 3:05 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Howee wrote:
Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing

i'm thinking this thread should be renamed "How to Hyper-Analyze a Simple Problem" Razz

It was presented as a "riddle", which means it needs to be examined closely and the obvious solution is likely incorrect.



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sigur3



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PostPosted: 07/17/17 3:24 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Howee wrote:
Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing

i'm thinking this thread should be renamed "How to Hyper-Analyze a Simple Problem" Razz


I will neither confirm nor deny that this was my intention.


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PostPosted: 07/17/17 11:23 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Depends on what you mean by "lose"

30$ if you literally mean how much money was lost to the customer/robber. Robber took 100 dollars gave 70 of it back, left with 30 (and a product).

However, if you mean "lost" as in, how short the register will be when you count at the end of the night then I believe 100.

1. He takes 100 dollars..meaning the register is 100 dollars short
2. He "buys" something for 70 dollars, giving the 100 back..(meaning the register would now be 70 dollars short, as opposed to 100)
3. The owner than gives the man 30 back..meaning the register is back at being 100 dollars short.



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PostPosted: 07/18/17 9:56 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

We're over-complicating this. It's actually much simpler and the answer is still "c" $100.

There are two separate and independant events described here.

First "A guy walks into a store and steals a $100 bill from the register without the owner’s knowledge."

That theft is complete. And does anyone dispute that at that moment, the amount of money the owner has lost is $100? That loss is final.

Second, the guy "buys $70 worth of goods using the $100 bill and the owner gives $30 in change.". Money is fungible. It doesn't matter whether the particular currency used is the stolen $100 bill or two $50s the guy had in his pocket. This is a legitimate transaction. The owner received $70 for $70 worth of goods. There is no loss. The profit on this sale isn't allocated to offset the theft any more than is the profit on the sale of a gallon of milk to the previous customer. This sale is an independant transaction. And it's no different than every other sale of the day.

So the only event relevant to the question is the theft of the $100 bill. The amount of money lost by the owner is the stolen $100 bill.


So are we sure the hundred dollar bill wasn't counterfeit? Then the loss would be zero. Very Happy


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PostPosted: 07/18/17 10:48 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

ArtBest23 wrote:
So the only event relevant to the question is the theft of the $100 bill. The amount of money lost by the owner is the stolen $100 bill.

I agree that it is simple, but disagree with your conclusion. The $100 was stolen, but $70 was returned.

The riddle was asking a very specific question that we are adding additional information to that wasn't asked for. Ultimately, the thief is leaving with $30 of the owners money and goods valued at $70. The only thing the question was concerned with was the money, not the goods so the answer is $30.



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PostPosted: 07/18/17 2:04 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

justintyme wrote:
ArtBest23 wrote:
So the only event relevant to the question is the theft of the $100 bill. The amount of money lost by the owner is the stolen $100 bill.

I agree that it is simple, but disagree with your conclusion. The $100 was stolen, but $70 was returned.

The riddle was asking a very specific question that we are adding additional information to that wasn't asked for. Ultimately, the thief is leaving with $30 of the owners money and goods valued at $70. The only thing the question was concerned with was the money, not the goods so the answer is $30.


Under the JIT theory, if a thief steals the Mona Lisa, the Louvre hasn't lost any money. That may be a word game way to look at it, but not an economic or accountancy way.

The Louvre lost the money it paid to acquire the Mona Lisa, the cost. If the Louvre had the painting up for sale, the sale price over cost -- the profit -- was also lost. Finally, if there was an admission charge to see the painting, all that future money will have been lost.

That said, maybe the riddle is intended to rest on wordplay. No one can know the answer to that.
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PostPosted: 07/18/17 2:21 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

GlennMacGrady wrote:
justintyme wrote:
ArtBest23 wrote:
So the only event relevant to the question is the theft of the $100 bill. The amount of money lost by the owner is the stolen $100 bill.

I agree that it is simple, but disagree with your conclusion. The $100 was stolen, but $70 was returned.

The riddle was asking a very specific question that we are adding additional information to that wasn't asked for. Ultimately, the thief is leaving with $30 of the owners money and goods valued at $70. The only thing the question was concerned with was the money, not the goods so the answer is $30.


Under the JIT theory, if a thief steals the Mona Lisa, the Louvre hasn't lost any money. That may be a word game way to look at it, but not an economic or accountancy way.

The Louvre lost the money it paid to acquire the Mona Lisa, the cost. If the Louvre had the painting up for sale, the sale price over cost -- the profit -- was also lost. Finally, if there was an admission charge to see the painting, all that future money will have been lost.

That said, maybe the riddle is intended to rest on wordplay. No one can know the answer to that.


The Mona Lisa is insured, so the monetary losses would be minimal. Also, the Louvre doesn't own the painting so they would not be out the value of it in any event.



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PostPosted: 07/18/17 2:26 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

GlennMacGrady wrote:
justintyme wrote:
ArtBest23 wrote:
So the only event relevant to the question is the theft of the $100 bill. The amount of money lost by the owner is the stolen $100 bill.

I agree that it is simple, but disagree with your conclusion. The $100 was stolen, but $70 was returned.

The riddle was asking a very specific question that we are adding additional information to that wasn't asked for. Ultimately, the thief is leaving with $30 of the owners money and goods valued at $70. The only thing the question was concerned with was the money, not the goods so the answer is $30.


Under the JIT theory, if a thief steals the Mona Lisa, the Louvre hasn't lost any money. That may be a word game way to look at it, but not an economic or accountancy way.

The Louvre lost the money it paid to acquire the Mona Lisa, the cost. If the Louvre had the painting up for sale, the sale price over cost -- the profit -- was also lost. Finally, if there was an admission charge to see the painting, all that future money will have been lost.

That said, maybe the riddle is intended to rest on wordplay. No one can know the answer to that.

The problem is that we have incomplete information to answer this question any other way than the literal one.

The man paid $70 for goods, but we don't know the actual cost paid by the owner for those goods, nor do we know for sure that the owner would have been able to sell those goods to anyone else for the $70 ask.

For instance, if someone stole the Mona Lisa, how much money did the Louvre lose? To come up with a figure we would need to know how much they paid for it, the replacement cost (in this case not possible), or have had a buyer contracted out at a specific known price and thus have lost that sale. Without knowing this information, we can't know how much actual money they lost. All we know is they lost a legendary painting with an estimated value.

So to answer this question with only the information provided, and not making any other assumptions we need to answer only for what was specifically asked.



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PostPosted: 07/18/17 2:33 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

pilight wrote:
GlennMacGrady wrote:
justintyme wrote:
ArtBest23 wrote:
So the only event relevant to the question is the theft of the $100 bill. The amount of money lost by the owner is the stolen $100 bill.

I agree that it is simple, but disagree with your conclusion. The $100 was stolen, but $70 was returned.

The riddle was asking a very specific question that we are adding additional information to that wasn't asked for. Ultimately, the thief is leaving with $30 of the owners money and goods valued at $70. The only thing the question was concerned with was the money, not the goods so the answer is $30.


Under the JIT theory, if a thief steals the Mona Lisa, the Louvre hasn't lost any money. That may be a word game way to look at it, but not an economic or accountancy way.

The Louvre lost the money it paid to acquire the Mona Lisa, the cost. If the Louvre had the painting up for sale, the sale price over cost -- the profit -- was also lost. Finally, if there was an admission charge to see the painting, all that future money will have been lost.

That said, maybe the riddle is intended to rest on wordplay. No one can know the answer to that.


The Mona Lisa is insured, so the monetary losses would be minimal. Also, the Louvre doesn't own the painting so they would not be out the value of it in any event.


Your pedantry misses the economic point of my analogy to the store. Assume the Louvre, like the store owner, does own the painting with a cost basis and doesn't have insurance.

Even with insurance, to go down the rabbit hole of irrelevant pedantry, the Louvre will be out the cost of the insurance premiums, the cost of the inevitable legal battles with the insurance company, and the likely deficit of the insurance recovery compared to the market value of the painting. Plus all the assumed future admission revenues. However much this is, it is not "money" under the JIT wordplay approach to the riddle.
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PostPosted: 07/18/17 7:40 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

See what you've done, sigur3?

Are you happy now????? Evil or Very Mad




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PostPosted: 07/18/17 11:10 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

justintyme wrote:
ArtBest23 wrote:
So the only event relevant to the question is the theft of the $100 bill. The amount of money lost by the owner is the stolen $100 bill.

I agree that it is simple, but disagree with your conclusion. The $100 was stolen, but $70 was returned.

The riddle was asking a very specific question that we are adding additional information to that wasn't asked for. Ultimately, the thief is leaving with $30 of the owners money and goods valued at $70. The only thing the question was concerned with was the money, not the goods so the answer is $30.


Art is correct. The $100 dollars is the amount of money that the owner lost. Whether the thief or another customer buys $70 worth of good is irrelevant to the loss, anyone including the thief paying $70 for $70 worth of goods creates no additional loss for the ownwer, the owner giving $30 in change from a $70 purchase that the customer thief or not paid $100 dollars for creates no additional loss. At the point of the purchase even if the thief is using the $100 he stole to purchase the goods and the owner gets $70 dollars back, the owner is still out the $100 dollars of the original theft in terms of how much money the owner will have at the end of the day. The thief using the original money is the "trick" part of the equation to throw people off IMO, not a play on words in relationship to what the riddle means by "Money".


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PostPosted: 07/19/17 12:17 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

J-Spoon wrote:
justintyme wrote:
ArtBest23 wrote:
So the only event relevant to the question is the theft of the $100 bill. The amount of money lost by the owner is the stolen $100 bill.

I agree that it is simple, but disagree with your conclusion. The $100 was stolen, but $70 was returned.

The riddle was asking a very specific question that we are adding additional information to that wasn't asked for. Ultimately, the thief is leaving with $30 of the owners money and goods valued at $70. The only thing the question was concerned with was the money, not the goods so the answer is $30.


Art is correct. The $100 dollars is the amount of money that the owner lost. Whether the thief or another customer buys $70 worth of good is irrelevant to the loss, anyone including the thief paying $70 for $70 worth of goods creates no additional loss for the ownwer, the owner giving $30 in change from a $70 purchase that the customer thief or not paid $100 dollars for creates no additional loss. At the point of the purchase even if the thief is using the $100 he stole to purchase the goods and the owner gets $70 dollars back, the owner is still out the $100 dollars of the original theft in terms of how much money the owner will have at the end of the day. The thief using the original money is the "trick" part of the equation to throw people off IMO, not a play on words in relationship to what the riddle means by "Money".

Except under your interpretation, how do we actually know it is $100 lost? We are told the thief bought goods for $70, but we don't know that those goods actually represent $70 worth of lost money.

There have been numerous posts here that have pointed out the problems with that assumption.

First off, if the owner is selling the goods for $70 it is very unlikely that he/she bought it from the wholesaler for $70. Perhaps they bought it for $59 and marked it up to 20%? If that is the case, then the owner is only out $89 (the price directly paid for the goods--or how much it will cost to replace them--plus the $30 change).

Secondly, we cannot assume that the owner would have sold this same item to someone else for the full $70. What if she/he eventually holds a sale and marks it down to $60 because no one was buying it? Then they would only be out a theoretical $90 (the $60 for what someone would have paid, and the $30 change).

The point being that there's not enough information to be able to reach an answer if we assume that the goods are to be figured into the value of the owner's monetary loss. We would need to know how much was actually paid, or how much it would actually have sold for at a later date.

So the only way to reach a definite conclusion of one of the available answers is to look at the money lost and ignore the lost goods. This is possible because the question only asks about the money. Every other approach requires an assumption to be made on how much the loss of the goods left the owner in the hole.

Out of curiosity, does anyone else watch the GSN show Idiotest? This type of wordplay riddle is featured all the time, where you are left with only one choice that doesn't require making deeper assumptions than what is directly detailed.



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PostPosted: 07/19/17 12:52 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

justintyme wrote:
J-Spoon wrote:
justintyme wrote:
ArtBest23 wrote:
So the only event relevant to the question is the theft of the $100 bill. The amount of money lost by the owner is the stolen $100 bill.

I agree that it is simple, but disagree with your conclusion. The $100 was stolen, but $70 was returned.

The riddle was asking a very specific question that we are adding additional information to that wasn't asked for. Ultimately, the thief is leaving with $30 of the owners money and goods valued at $70. The only thing the question was concerned with was the money, not the goods so the answer is $30.


Art is correct. The $100 dollars is the amount of money that the owner lost. Whether the thief or another customer buys $70 worth of good is irrelevant to the loss, anyone including the thief paying $70 for $70 worth of goods creates no additional loss for the ownwer, the owner giving $30 in change from a $70 purchase that the customer thief or not paid $100 dollars for creates no additional loss. At the point of the purchase even if the thief is using the $100 he stole to purchase the goods and the owner gets $70 dollars back, the owner is still out the $100 dollars of the original theft in terms of how much money the owner will have at the end of the day. The thief using the original money is the "trick" part of the equation to throw people off IMO, not a play on words in relationship to what the riddle means by "Money".

Except under your interpretation, how do we actually know it is $100 lost? We are told the thief bought goods for $70, but we don't know that those goods actually represent $70 worth of lost money.

There have been numerous posts here that have pointed out the problems with that assumption.

First off, if the owner is selling the goods for $70 it is very unlikely that he/she bought it from the wholesaler for $70. Perhaps they bought it for $59 and marked it up to 20%? If that is the case, then the owner is only out $89 (the price directly paid for the goods--or how much it will cost to replace them--plus the $30 change).

Secondly, we cannot assume that the owner would have sold this same item to someone else for the full $70. What if she/he eventually holds a sale and marks it down to $60 because no one was buying it? Then they would only be out a theoretical $90 (the $60 for what someone would have paid, and the $30 change).

The point being that there's not enough information to be able to reach an answer if we assume that the goods are to be figured into the value of the owner's monetary loss. We would need to know how much was actually paid, or how much it would actually have sold for at a later date.

So the only way to reach a definite conclusion of one of the available answers is to look at the money lost and ignore the lost goods. This is possible because the question only asks about the money. Every other approach requires an assumption to be made on how much the loss of the goods left the owner in the hole.

Out of curiosity, does anyone else watch the GSN show Idiotest? This type of wordplay riddle is featured all the time, where you are left with only one choice that doesn't require making deeper assumptions than what is directly detailed.


IMO profit margin and the other posts you are referencing are irrelevant to the deeper logic of the riddle.

What the goods are sold for, or what they would be sold for at a later date is irrelevant. The exchange of $70 worth of goods for $70 worth of currency creates no additional loss to the owner, and if it creates gain for the owner based on profit margin that gain is the same whether the money comes from the thief or not, therefor the original loss of the $100 is not impacted if the thief uses the money in the store or not.

Yes the owner makes a profit selling the goods as that is the point of the store, yes those same goods could be a different price another day, but the original $100 dollars being removed from the register is the loss, and the only thing that would impact that loss would be the thief putting the money back in the register without the owner knowing. Any other transaction whether it is with the thief's money or anyone else's creates the same result In terms of how much money the owner has. After the day of sales no matter what is bought, how much profit is made, who buys the goods, whether it is on sale or not there will still be $100 less in the registered than there should be. The $100 dollars that the thief stole from the register in the premiss of the riddle.

Or to put it another way,

At the beginning of the day the owner has $1,000 in the register.

The thief steals $100 leaving $900 dollars in the register.

The Owner than does $1,000 in sales, including the transaction with the thief for $70.

The owner starting with $1,000 and selling $1,000 worth of goods should have $2,000 in the register.

But because $100 was stolen from the initial $1,000 dollars the owner will only have $1,900 in the register. Hence the loss is $100.

IMO the riddle is more akin to a long sequence of multiplied #s, if one of the #s is 0 then no matter how many other elements are in the equation the final answer will still be 0. The theft of the $100 dollars from the register is the loss, nothing else that occurs puts the stolen $100 dollars back in the register.


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PostPosted: 07/19/17 11:35 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Y'all have ENTIRELY too much time on your hands! Laughing



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