John has eleven friends. He has a bowl containing eleven apples. Now He wants to divide the eleven apples among his friends, in such a way that an apple should remain in his bowl.
How can He do it?
Three men in a cafe order a meal the total cost of which is $15. They each contribute $5. The waiter takes the money to the chef who recognises the three as friends and asks the waiter to return $5 to the men.
The waiter is not only poor at mathematics but dishonest and instead of going to the trouble of splitting the $5 between the three he simply gives them $1 each and pockets the remaining $2 for himself.
Now, each of the men effectively paid $4, the total paid is therefore $12. Add the $2 in the waiters pocket and this comes to $14. Where has the other $1 gone from the original $15?
After a heavy Thanksgiving meal, the night watchman went to work. In the morning, he told his boss he had dreamed that a saboteur planted a bomb in the factory and that he felt it was a warning. The boss promptly fired him. Worker confused, Why boss fire him?
In 2011, people playing Foldit, an online puzzle game about protein folding, resolved the structure of an enzyme that causes an Aids-like disease in monkeys. Researchers had been working on the problem for 13 years. The gamers solved it in three weeks.
