A calculator with a display and nine buttons.

Think of a number. Take a paper and a pen to do the following operations:

  • Calculate its double
  • Add 10 units to the result
  • Calculate its half
  • Subtract the number that you thought.

The number that you get after these five operations was 5, was not it? Can you explain the trick?

Explanation

Let x be the number that you thought.

Then, the four steps are:

2x

2x+10

\frac{2x+10}{2}=x+5

x+5-x=5

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