Why the Ball Costs 5 cents…

• August 29, 2016
• BRendine
• no comments

The ball costs 5 cents. If a bat and a ball together cost $1.10 and the bat is $1 more than the ball, then $1.05 plus $0.05 is $1.10. I was reading the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, where Daniel Kahneman explains that there are two systems to the brain. There is the fast thinking side of the brain, which relies on past experiences to give you the quick responses, like what is 1 plus 1 – you don’t have to use energy to get an answer. Then there is the slow side of the brain, which needs to work its way through a problem. The downside of the slow side of the brain is that it uses energy and wants to rely on the fast side of the brain. So it will default to reason if we do not sit down and force ourselves to think though a seemingly simple problem. Take our bat and ball question for example – this question is designed to see how lazy your brain is. A brain that heavily relies on the fast thinking side of the brain, will say 10 cents… $1.10 minus the dollar for the bat is 10 cents; however, the fact checking, slow thinking side of the brain, if given the chance to think it through, will stop us in our tracks and say “Wait a second, a dollar more than 10 cents is $1.10 but then we need to add those numbers together since we are buying BOTH the bat and the ball, which would total $1.20 and not the $1.10 total we were given.

It’s a good read…