If I have 12 balls, and I lose half of them, then I retrieve 2/3 of my lost balls: how many balls do I have?
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8
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9
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10
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11
To solve this question, the user needs to understand basic arithmetic and fractions.
Firstly, if we lose half of the 12 balls, we will be left with 6 balls (12/2=6).
Secondly, if we retrieve 2/3 of the lost balls, we will get:
(2/3) x (1/2) x 12 = 4.
So, we retrieve 4 balls.
Therefore, the total number of balls we have now is the sum of the balls we had initially (12) minus the balls we lost (6) plus the balls we retrieved (4), which equals to 12 - 6 + 4 = 10.
Therefore, the answer is:
The Answer is: C. 10.
Start with 12 balls. Losing half means losing 6, leaving 6 in hand. "2/3 of my lost balls" refers to 2/3 of the 6 that were lost, i.e., 4 balls retrieved. Adding those back: 6 + 4 = 10. So the answer is 10. The distractors (8, 9, 11) come from common slip-ups: e.g., mistakenly taking 2/3 of the original 12 (=8), arithmetic errors, or miscounting the remaining half. The correct, careful reading of the wording confirms 10.