Friends on a Walk
I start my homework with warm-up puzzles.
Puzzle. Two friends went for a walk and found $20. How much money would they have found if there were four of them?
The answer, of course, is $20. The number of people doesn’t change the amount of money lying around. Even ChatGPT gave this answer. Duh!
My hope was to catch them not paying attention and mindlessly multiply to get $40.
To my surprise, some of them answered $80. The ‘them’ in the problem is not specified. It appears that they read the puzzle as if they found one 20-dollar bill, and them was referring to bills.
One student wrote a thoughtful reply: Having more friends most likely wouldn’t change the amount of money found, considering the amount of money is independent of the number of people, meaning the friends would still find $20. However, with double the people, they may find more money in other locations. There is also a chance that the 2 extra friends would make the group walk a different path, meaning they wouldn’t find money at all.
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