A pencil. It’s wooden, is covered in paint and the output of a pencil in the form of writing or art can make you laugh or cry. And graphite is the dark part inside.
As a result of temporary magical powers, you have made it to the Wimbledon finals and are playing Roger Federer for all the marbles. However, your powers cannot last the whole match. What score do you want it to be when they disappear, to maximize your chances of hanging on for a win?
It sounds obvious that you should ask to be ahead two sets to love (it takes 3 out of 5 sets to win
the men’s), and in the third set, ahead 5-0 in games and 40-love in the sixth game. (Probably you
want to be serving, but if your serve is like mine, you might prefer Roger to be serving the sixth
game down 0-40 so that you can pray for a double fault.)
Not so fast! These solutions give you essentially 3 chances to get lucky and win, but you can
get six chances—with three services by you and three by Roger. You still want to be up two sets
to none, but let the game score be 6-6 in the third set and 6-0—in your favor, of course—in the
tiebreaker.
Milton shuffled slowly along the shelves browsing books. He finally walked up to the counter and handed the girl a book. She looked at the inside cover and told him it would be $3.75. Milton handed her the money and walked away without the book. The girl watched him leave empty-handed but didn’t try to stop him. Why?
Milton was a forgetful and naughty fellow. He was summoning his courage to approach the counter to return his overdue book. The kindly lass at the counter saw the book was 15 days overdue and had accrued the egregious late fee of $3.75 (25 cents a day). Lesson learned, Milton never returned a book late again.