Posted by Matt on December 11, 19101 at 16:26:56:

In Reply to: mathimatical error posted by josh on February 25, 19100 at 02:36:52:

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

Having exactly one dollar and eighty-seven cents is quite difficult when you have exactly sixty cents worth of pennies to work with. Since the ones digit of your desired number is a seven, and the only way to achieve seven cents is with either a nickel and two pennies, or seven pennies, so the total amount of pennies you have must either end with a one or a seven. The exact amount of pennies you have to deal with is sixty, the second digit of the amount of pennies you are working with being zero (not two or seven) so it is not possible to have one dollar and eighty-seven cents and also have exactly sixty pennies creating that number.

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