Are You Smarter Than a Harvard Student?

Here’s a simple puzzle:

A bat and ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

If you’re like most people, an obvious answer jumped to mind immediately: 10 cents. But as the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow (which is where this example comes from) says, “The distinctive mark of this easy puzzle is that it evokes an answer that is intuitive, appealing, and wrong.”

The correct answer is five cents (.5 + 1.05 = $1.10). What’s particularly interesting is that this puzzle has been presented to thousands of university students, and more than half of those from Harvard, MIT, and Princeton provided the incorrect answer. At less prestigious universities, more than 80% got it wrong.

It’s not that it’s a difficult puzzle; in fact, it only takes a moment to figure it out. But that’s the point. Those students didn’t take a moment. They were confident in their immediate intuition and went for the obvious — but wrong — solution. They didn’t stop to think.

This example goes a long way to explaining why advanced dental education is so important. There’s a lot to be said for intuition, primarily when it’s based on professional experience. If you’re a seasoned dentist, you will see more in a few seconds of looking in a mouth than a first-year student will see in an hour. That’s the beauty of experience.

But there is a danger in relying too heavily on intuitions and first impressions. I hear it all the time from dentists who attend our hands-on workshops: It’s like I’m seeing things I didn’t see before. It’s not a matter of intelligence. It’s about being shown how to resist the quick solution and embrace new ways of looking at things.

It’s about taking the time to stop and think.