Imagine you’re taking a test with a one hour time limit, with higher scores translating into larger amounts of snacks, and you love snacks.

It’s a fairly difficult test of ten questions. You end up being able to answer all of them, but you end up getting 7 of them right. You get a score of 70%. 

You see two other people and they share their test scores with you. 

One person got a 100%. The other person got a 50%. 

You never saw any other test, so you assume that everyone’s test was the same, right? I’ll assert you’d probably imagine that the person with a perfect score deserves more snacks than yourself, and that the person with the 50% probably deserves less snacks than you.

However, when you compare tests, you find out that the person with the 50% score actually had 30 questions to answer – meaning they got 15 questions right. The person with the 100% score actually only had five questions to answer – the same five that you got right – but you had an additional five questions to answer.

Question: Are you upset that the tests aren’t fair, or are you upset that you weren’t given the test with only five questions?