By: Paul Potier
Every once in a while I find a Facebook post that makes me take notice. I would like to share this little test/riddle/problem with you that one of my Facebook friends posted a short time ago. I used my 4 step decision making process to find the correct answer of 14. Then I read everyone else’s answer. I was surprised to find that the majority of people wrote 16 as the answer. Of course, at first glance 16 appears to be the correct answer. However, just like in a pool game, the obvious choice is sometimes not the best choice. Sometimes the correct choice is “Hidden in plain Sight”. Here is the test that I am talking about:
To find the right answer in this test a person has to look very closely at every detail. In the first line it takes no time at all to see that if 3 apples equals 30 then 1 apple has a value of 10. In the second line it is easy to conclude that each bunch of bananas has a value of 4 as 10 plus 4 plus 4 equals 18. In the third line we see if a bunch of bananas is worth 4 and the answer is 2 then the coconut must be worth 2.
In the last line at first glance we can quickly equate coconut (2) plus apple (10) plus bunch of bananas (4) should equal 16. However upon closer examination we can see that line 3 had 2 coconut halves but line 4 only has 1 coconut half so it should only have a value of 1 not 2. The apple has not changed so its’ value should still be 10. But a much closer observation of the bunch of bananas will reveal that the earlier bunches had 4 bananas in them but the bananas in line 4 only have 3 bananas. Therefore these bananas only have a value of 3. The correct equation would be half a coconut (1) plus an apple (10) plus 3 bananas (3) for a correct answer of 14.
In my opinion it is not intelligence that will help the person come to the correct answer but rather the process by which they use to solve these type of problems. I am using this as another example of how easy it is to come to the wrong choice in a pool game if the process you use to make decisions is flawed. The good news is that if you change the process that you use to solve problems to one that encourages you to continue to look for other options and helps you develop skills of awareness then you will make better choices on the pool table.
Enjoy the Process!
Paul Potier
