Instinctively response

I have posted a question.

“A bat and a ball cost $1.10. The bat cost a dollar more than the ball. How much would the ball cost.”

I saw the question before in this book titled:” Streetlights and shadows”. Whereby the book was debating on the question of decision making. Would explicit decision making or tacit decision making better in moments of extreme crisis.

Perhaps it was asked in a wrong context in which readers are able to ponder upon it and automatically derived a mathematical equation to it. But given in the context of instinctive response, most would have think about it before giving an answer. Very few would have the ability to instinctively tell me the exact answers.

So the questions that i had in mind was, “can this ability of instinctively deriving at the correct answers without the need to ponder?”.

I believed that it can be done. I was given a multiplier table (up to 10×10) and was tasked to remember it when i was young. Instinctively helpful throughout most of the schooling days.

So if this can be done, perhaps having hardcoding these “formulates” would actually be helpful in future occurrences.