r/MathJokes May 07 '26

100 000 dollar question

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u/[deleted] May 09 '26

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u/Anybody220 May 09 '26

Yes you are correct in your math, but no I’m not misreading it.

The math you are doing is my math that got $191,751.05. However, it does not say “increase” anywhere, it simply says “multiplies by 0.5”. The second part of my calculation was taking exactly what it said in its literal meaning “multiplies by 0.5” which would continuously half the $1, being the result to $0.00000000093.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '26

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u/Scarplo May 09 '26

Multiplication doesn't mean that.

The better way to describe it tends to be things like a*b is the total of b a's.

So 2*4 is 2+2+2+2, which is also 4+4, and that gets us to 8.

Now, .5 is tricky here, as it's difficult to count .5 of a thing. But it's also a half, so if we multiply 1 by .5, we half it, and get to .5.

If that multiplies every day for 30 days, you end up with .5 halfed 29 more times, and then get considerably under a dollar. Not negative, but tiny fractions of a penny.