Question

A bank customer had Rs. 100 in his account. He then made 6 withdrawals, totaling Rs. 100. He kept a record of these withdrawals, and the balance remaining in the account, as follows:

Withdrawals	Balance left
Rs. 50	Rs. 50
Rs. 25	Rs. 25
Rs. 10	Rs. 15
Rs. 8	Rs. 7
Rs. 5	Rs. 2
Rs. 2	Rs. 0
Rs. 100	Rs. 99

So, why are the totals not exactly right?

• A. There is a mistake in the total of withdrawals.
• B. There is a mistake in the total of the balance.
• C. The two totals need not be equal.
• D. The bank has cheated the customer.

Hint:

Check whether the "balance left" column is even supposed to add up to anything meaningful in the first place, since each balance already includes every earlier withdrawal.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

Step 1: Check that the withdrawals column is correct.
Add up the withdrawals: \(50 + 25 + 10 + 8 + 5 + 2 = 100\). This matches the Rs. 100 the customer started with, so nothing is wrong here.

Step 2: Understand what the "balance left" column actually represents.
Each entry in that column is simply Rs. 100 minus the withdrawals made up to that point. It is a running leftover amount, not a separate quantity of money that was ever handed out.

Step 3: See why adding that column is meaningless.
Adding six different snapshots of "money still left in the account at various points" has no natural reason to produce Rs. 100, or any particular number at all. The balance figures overlap with each other in what they represent, since each balance already includes the effect of every withdrawal before it. Summing them is like adding up six photographs of a shrinking pile of money, not counting the money itself.

Step 4: Confirm with the actual numbers.
\(50 + 25 + 15 + 7 + 2 + 0 = 99\). This lands close to 100 purely by coincidence of the numbers chosen here, not because it was ever supposed to equal the withdrawal total.

Final Answer:
The withdrawal total and the balance total measure two different things, so there was never a reason for them to match. Nothing is actually wrong with either column. \[ \boxed{\text{The two totals need not be equal.}} \]