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

[Gadfly]

Your answer to the riddle above can predict whether you are a believer in religion or a disbeliever:

If you answered $10 you are inclined to believe in religion. If you answered $5 you are inclined to disbelieve.

I have no axe to grind, I just found the following study interesting:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-...and-reason
@Brad Did you read the article or is that simply your intuitive answer?
@Jack I have to agree with you there.
@Paz
Ball: 5
Bat: 105

105 + 5 = 110 / Ball and bat cost $110
105 - 5 = 100 / Bat costs 100 more than ball
@Rocky Mountain Patriot
re: "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."

Consider what it takes to vote for a politician with the record you have outlined in your response. Belief in the nebulous slogans of Hope and Change, faith that despite all of the failures and scandals his first term wrought, that belief in him will bring them prosperity, peace, and the good will of other nations. They have their own doctrine which requires the abandonment of reason and logic when confronted with facts which contradict their relativistic philosophy. They too use fear and guilt to control the masses, ask for sacrifice and warn that our productivity is a sin that manifest itself in carbon. They prophesize a great Apocalypse will punish us should we fail to heed their warning
They sell carbon credits in much the same way the church sold indulgences in the middle ages. They cast out, publicly denounce, shun and marginalize any heretic "denier" who dares to question their dogma.

Since Progressives tend to support or oppose policies and politicians based on how those policies and politicians make them feel about themselves, they do very little intellectual examination of whether the policies and politicians they advocate are successful. That's because it doesn't matter to them whether the policy is effective or not; it matters whether advocating the policy makes them feel "good" or "bad," "compassionate" or "stingy," "nice" or "mean."

Because of this, Progressivism has more in common with religion than it does with other political ideologies like conservatism or libertarianism. Moreover, liberal beliefs are more like religious doctrine than any sort of battle-tested policies that b
bear up under logic or examination. Although the interpretation of the doctrine that the Left supports may change a bit over time, just as religious doctrine does, it's essentially taken on faith, like scripture. This is much easier than questioning a policy's merit.

Just because they may not necessarily display a propensity for organized religion in its commonly accepted definition, the flock of the progressive movement meet the basic criteria to form one if they wished. Good grief and I said I didn't have an axe to grind..

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;…
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;…

[Brad]

It's simple math, and the deduction is false.

@edit: One of my many subscriptions, naturally.

[Jack]

At any rate, you've overpaid.

[delightfulcircle298]

It's actually a comprehension problem (in the way the question is worded) rather than a math problem...because if you had to solve for "x" everyone would get it.

x + (100 + x) = 110

[Pazuzu...]

110 minus 100 equals 10... then I guess your religious if you believe it's 5 dollars... cause religion has you believing 2 plus 2 equals 5

[Tony]

Wrong. If you answered $10 then you are more likely to have just have seen the number 100 and 10 and did simple math. If you answered $5 then you still did simple math.

[Niel J]

I'm not sure the ability to interpret a word problem into a basic algebraic equation signifies anything more than your mathematics education. FWIW, I got $5 and I'm agnostic (but not religious).

[who WAS #1?]

Maybe I'm stupid but I can't understand why anyone would answer anything other than $10. Why would people say $5? It's basic math. So basic I read the question 3 times just to make sure it wasn't a trick question because it's so blatantly obvious that 110-100=10.

I read the article and can't believe psychologists get paid to make such studies.
Where do people get the 105 #? That's not what the question says.
After reading the article again I have concluded that psychologists are crazy.
One doesn't use intuition to solve math problems and I can't imagine what bearing knowing how to do math has to do with religion.

I'm baffled by this whole concept: why would people who get the right answer be more inclined to believe in religion while people who get some crazy answer .....
I would have thought it would be the other way around.

EDIT: I stand corrected. I was wrong. Thank you for helping me to understand.
I just KNEW it was a trick question but couldn't spot the trick.

[wider scope]

Oh, wow, this questions reminds me of a SAT question.

My first instinct was 10.00, but remembering those SAT questions, I did the mental calculations and realized that no, the answer is 5.00.

[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,