To put it simply, the answer to The Missing Dollar Paradox is that there actually isn’t a missing dollar in this scenario. The waiter took the $30 that was put down on the table to pay and was given $5 back by the cashier because there was a mistake and the bill was really supposed to be $25, so to solve the issue of giving the money owed to these three women back evenly he pocketed $2 and gave them $3 back in total so they would receive $1 a piece. The root of the confusion in this paradox lies in the misleading wording of the following sentence: “Now, each of the ladies paid $9. Three times 9 is $27. The waiter has $2 in his pocket. Two plus 27 is $29. The ladies originally handed over $30.” It is absolutely true that $9 multiplied by 3 is $27 like the sentence suggests, however that is not relevant to the problem in any way whatsoever. The restaurant’s cashier kept $25 for the bill, the waiter kept $2, and each of the three women got $1 back which adds up to $3 total. $25 + $3 + $2 = $30 which is the original total put down on the table to pay the bill, so in reality a dollar never really disappeared.
Rowan Counterintuitive 