Puzzles
Five machines, five minutes, five widgets
If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
Reveal the answer
5 minutes. Each machine independently makes one widget in 5 minutes, so 100 machines running in parallel make 100 widgets in the same 5 minutes. The intuitive but wrong answer, 100 minutes, comes from the same Cognitive Reflection Test as the bat-and-ball problem — it catches people who reason by scaling a ratio instead of picturing what's actually happening.
— Shane Frederick, Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making — Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2005