I am busy reading a book called ‘Risk’ by Dan Gardner. In the book ‘Risk’ there is a riddle. The riddle is about the bat and ball. Dan Gardner says that we have two ways of working things out and what we will say. System One and System Two are what we use to solve things. So the bat and ball riddle tests these systems. Here is the Bat and Ball riddle. Can you work it out.
Bat & Ball Riddle
A bat and ball cost $1.10
If the bat costs $1 more than the ball then
What does the ball costs?
The most common and reactive answer is probably what you just said aloud or in your mind. Yes the most common answer for that bat and ball riddle is 10cents. However, you are wrong if you answered 10cents.
How can it be you may ask well this is the bat and ball riddle. You will find the answer to the bat and ball riddle at the end of this post. In the meantime let me know what you think the answer is and why in the comment section below.
Bat and Ball Riddle Answer
The bat and ball riddle was devised by Shane Fredrick from MIT. Here is how he explains why he created the bat and ball riddle:
Remember that adage about trusting your first instinct? Forget it, says MIT Sloan Professor Shane Frederick, who has developed a simple, three-item test that measures people’s ability to resist their first instinct.
“Do you want someone running your company who doesn’t think beyond their first impulse,” asks Frederick, “or do you want someone who is willing to ask herself, ‘Does this response really make any sense?’” He says that the cognitive reflection test serves as a rough measure of that ability or disposition.
So basically if you answered 10 cents as the price of the ball you rely on your first impulse, system one, as your guidance. But if you answered correctly then it would have been using reflective objective thinking or system two. I admit that I first answered 10cents but when told it was wrong took some time and worked it out.
Anyway so the Bat and Ball riddle answer is 5cents. Can you see why?
The bat was a dollar more than the ball.
This means they both started at the same cost so 1.10 -1 = 10
10/2 = 5
10 is dived by two because there are two items the bat and ball.
So what kind of problem solver are you do you use System One (impulse) or System Two (reflective, objective).
Reading: