It’s been may years since I first saw this question, so my memories may not be accurate, but I think my internal thoughts went something like this: ‘Well 1.10 minus 1 is .10, but wait I know this is a trick question so … Ah! I also need to divide by 2. The answer is .05.’ And then I checked my answer by doing 1.05 + .05 and 1.05 - .05. Introspecting now on why I leaped to the idea of dividing by two, I think what I was seeing was something like: In this context “costs $1.00 more than” means Exactly $1 more than, so it’s saying that without the $1 the two things are equal and you need to divide the cost between them.
This makes me think of ordinary real life contexts where I would say “costs $1.00 (or $20 or $100) more than.” It seems possible it might be clear to both me and my listener I meant ‘at least x more than,’ ‘as much as x more than,’ or ‘approximately x more than.’ I wonder if changing the wording to “The bat costs exactly $1.00 more than the ball” would help any.
It’s been may years since I first saw this question, so my memories may not be accurate, but I think my internal thoughts went something like this: ‘Well 1.10 minus 1 is .10, but wait I know this is a trick question so … Ah! I also need to divide by 2. The answer is .05.’ And then I checked my answer by doing 1.05 + .05 and 1.05 - .05. Introspecting now on why I leaped to the idea of dividing by two, I think what I was seeing was something like: In this context “costs $1.00 more than” means Exactly $1 more than, so it’s saying that without the $1 the two things are equal and you need to divide the cost between them.
This makes me think of ordinary real life contexts where I would say “costs $1.00 (or $20 or $100) more than.” It seems possible it might be clear to both me and my listener I meant ‘at least x more than,’ ‘as much as x more than,’ or ‘approximately x more than.’ I wonder if changing the wording to “The bat costs exactly $1.00 more than the ball” would help any.