NP: custom playlist

Okay, it's a reach, but Kevin Drum already used the obvious title. According to the New York Times article he cites, I'm likely to prefer risky gambles.

Which is to say, I got all three of these questions right:

• A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
• If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
• In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half the lake?

What's amusing is that the New York Times article states that all three questions have intuitive, but wrong answers. Intuitive, wrong answers which apparently never occured to me at all. I had to think for a second as to what those would even be. I'm going with a dollar, 100 minutes and 24 days.

The other thing is that I don't consider myself particularly attracted to risky gambles, unless you count my insistence on playing the lottery. And my beginner's luck the one time I actually went to a casino.