1. A ship carrying 800 passengers and crew is in collision off the banks
of Newfoundland, and 700 are saved. Describe the method by which the
_Evening Journal_ computes 400 souls lost.
2. The salary of a police lieutenant is about $2,500 a year. At what
rate of interest must this sum be invested to produce a million dollars'
worth of real estate in ten years?
3. 2+2=4. Show this to be true otherwise than by writing a four-act play
with its principal scene laid in a house of ill fame.
4. The loss to the nation from disease has been estimated at
$200,000,000 a year. Show the profit that would accrue to the nation
from abolishing every form of disease after deducting the cost of
maintaining the dependent widows and orphans of 50,000 doctors who have
starved to death.
5. In a certain gubernatorial campaign several disinterested gentlemen
contributed $10,000 each to the campaign fund; yet the total of campaign
contributions was a little over $5,000. Explain this.
6. If you were called upon to build a bridge to the moon, which would
you rather use, the total number of postage stamps on rejected magazine
contributions laid end to end, or the total number of automobiles
shipped from Detroit placed end to end?
7. In a recent article on mortality statistics in the _World_, the
writer omitted to divide his average death rate by 2. Was his argument,
because of that, two times as convincing or only half as convincing?
8. Describe the modifications in the laws of arithmetic introduced by
Mr. Thomas W. Lawson.