<p>Three people guessed the number of jelly balls in a jar. The guesses are as follows: 98, 137, and 164. All of the guesses are wrong.</p>
<p>One guess was off by 27. Another guess was off by 39. Another guess was ff by 12. </p>
<p>What is the correct number of beans in the jar?</p>
<p>there isn’t a particular formula, but the answer is 125</p>
<p>It’s pretty easy to play with the numbers at random and find the answer.</p>
<p>However, you could notice that the guesses 98 and 164 are the farthest apart and represent a difference of 66. This is the total of 27 and 39. You could not add 39 to 98 because it yields 137 and that is an answer. So the only anwer is 98 + 27 or 125.</p>
<p>^make it seem so easy, I would’ve wasted 5 minutes plugging in different numbers -__-</p>
<p>Thanks for the effort guys! I think the answer was indeed 125 :)!</p>
<p>I think the best way would be to draw a number line. Put 98, 137, and 164 all on a number line and figure out the distances between 98 and 137, 137 and 164. They’ll be 39 and 27, respectively, which means that your answer lies between 98 and 164 because there isn’t a distance that exceeds 39 (as stipulated in the Q). You can use the fact that 39=27+12. So the answer 125 will be 12 pts behind 137 and 27 pts over 98 to make 39 the longest distance (which will now be the one between 125 and 164) !!</p>
<p>You could just play around with the numbers – it’s not random guessing, but more like organized trial and error.</p>
<p>I started with the lowest guess. Could 98 be too low by 12? If so, the real # is 110. But that is not the right distance from the other guesses.</p>
<p>Could it be too low by 27? That makes the actual # of marbles 125. And hey, 125 just happens to be 12 away from 137 and 39 away from 164. I’m done.</p>