If a baseball and bat cost $110, and the bat costs $100 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

[sillyjuice508]

That was an interesting question but a flawed conclusion from the Canadian Psychologists who did the research, which showed bias typical of academics and pseudo social scientists in the hypothesis and study's apparent results. I'll share why.

My first impulse was that the question was simple and, in the first few seconds, that impulse had me thinking initially the answer was the ball cost $10. But I knew almost instantly that was wrong. At about seven or eight seconds, I knew the correct answer was $5. Of course, I'm not necessarily a typical subject for such basic math, because I hold secondary teaching credentials in math, have taught at both secondary and post-secondary levels, and have evaluated upwards of five thousand math educators and prospective educators for several states. I'm probably not who they want to draw conclusions from or consider in such a study, but I’ve probably worked with more high-level mathematicians and statisticians than the study authors.

Now I’ll offer a reasoned conclusion about their seemingly flawed assessment of the study results.

If we go back to my first impulse being the wrong $10 answer, that's apparently the first intuitive response for many who read the question. Since that’s based upon an instantaneous gut-level, sort of emotional response, again, impulse is probably the right word, we all know who on the political spectrum makes decisions based on those emotional, gut-level impulses, and they’re far from religious. They're not exactly analytical or reasoned thinkers, either.

Consider the recent election, for example. Every major news network pointed out that exit polls showed the public felt the economy was the critical issue in the election and the primary determinant for who they selected well above any other concern. Given the miserable state of the economy for four years now, that shouldn't be a surprise, but reelecting a President whose economy has managed unprecedented workforce shrinkage, pain and suffering showed how far from analytic liberals are. But then, most already knew that.

With 90.6 million Americans having filed unemployment claims under Obama after losing jobs, and that shocking count reaching 23.1 million more than lost jobs under President Bush, analytic thinkers wouldn't align with Obama's vengeance charge to punish fellow Americans by returning such a failure to Office, would they? Perhaps to be fair, on Saturday, November 3rd, just ahead of the election, the number of first time claimants after job losses nationwide was just 90,201,000, which was 23,125,666 more than filed new claims after job losses under Bush at the same period 196 weeks into his second term. And liberals were very vocal about how angry they were about the Bush economy. Similarly, Bush's U3 unemployment rate across 96 months in Office was almost the same as Bill Clinton's at a 5.27% rate, while his U6 real unemployment rate bettered Clinton's at 9.16%. Bush's U6 rate was more in line with Obama's average U3 rate, which topped 9% across 46 months in Office, and Obama's U6 rate reached 180% of the highest previous recorded average for a President at more than 16%.

For those who follow the stock market, investors had an immediate reaction to Obama's election in 2008, when during a 24-hour period after the election the DOW average dropped more than 500 points before settling at a loss of 486 points. The next day, November 6th, 2008, the market dropped another 443 points. And six days later, it shed another 411 points. Liberals on Y!A have often claimed those investors’ gut-level reactions with their investment in the stock market had nothing to do with Obama's election whatsoever. And they still don't recognize the DOW's plunge of 312 points on November 7th this year, the day after the election, or the 435 point drop by week's end, nor the 703 point loss total by the seventh trading day after the election having anything to do with Obama. So who would anyone with a few functioning synapsed brain cells say appeared intuition-driven, logic and analytic challenged voters representing a Party of emotion and impulse in American politics?

Now ask yourself, are liberals really the most religious individuals you know? They fit the other descriptors from the study about struggles with analytic reasoning. They’re emotion driven creatures not to be bothered with facts, reason or analytic thinking.

With those characteristics evident in many liberal progressives, their reelection of Barack Obama with the worst employment and economic figures since the BLS expanded its data gathering post World War II, flies in the face of claims voters made across-the-board in exit polls. Losing the election to such a deeply flawed, unprecedented poor performer was tough, but the toughest thing to comprehend, which made my head spin as vote counts posted during election coverage,

[BekindtoAnimals22]

Of course this is only one of the questions but someone my age really doesn't care if the bat costs $100 more than the ball. I would go to the store, look at the price tags, add up the total, and make the purchase. All I care about is that I actually got what I wanted and how much its going to hit my credit card. Does that mean I'm intuitive or does it mean I wouldn't complicate my life with such a question in the first place? I'm more interested in the total.

I don't connect any of it to religion at all. My instinct was to relate it to an actual purchase rather than to dissect the question. It is more a question of relativity to where you are in life. If you are in school, you are accustomed to these kinds of questions that don't relate to real life situations unless you are comparing the price of two bats or two balls to get the best value. Imo this proves nothing about religion unless one assumes a religious person is too dumb to figure it out. Bible scholars are very analytical but not about mathematics. The Bible is not a Book to be taken at face value. It is full of everything in life and of stories to be dissected and related to other references in other stories as well as to our lives. It is hardly something that can be quickly understood.

To answer your question, the ball cost $5 but my first instinct was $10.