I am surprised no one spotted the obvious solution:
perl -e '$_=24;print+(y///c,$m=$_)&&$_*3/4 .$/'
How old is Ann?
41–50 of 76 posts
Re: How old is Ann?
#42Hallucinations like these make it pretty clear that these agents do not really understand or think, IMHO.
Re: How old is Ann?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it took me a couple of minutes Are you in the 8th grade? Those of us a couple of decades past the 8th grade are maybe slower at algebra than someone who is actively drilling it...
This is more a test of reading comprehension than algebra. Figuring out what the questions is even trying to ask is like 90% of the question.
When I was that age, we practiced a lot of word problems. The folks who wrote the tests really favoured this kind of slightly underhanded logic
Re: How old is Ann?
#44Rephrasing it makes it easier to grasp: Mary is 24 years old. When Mary was Ann’s current age, Ann was 12 years old (half Mary’s current age). This makes it a bit easier to realize that Ann’s age has to be right in the middle of 12 and 24.
> This makes it a bit easier to realize that Ann’s age has to be right in the middle of 12 and 24. How did you actually make that deduction? I can only see it by writing down an equation. I can't see anything in the problem that directly implies it.
Mary is 24 years old. When Ann was 12, Mary was Ann’s current age.
Let's say Ann's current age is 13. Then, when Ann was 12, Mary must have been 13. Now that Ann is 13, Mary must be 14, but she's 24.
This means that the only way for Mary's-age-when-Ann-was-12 to have been Ann's-age-now is for the same amount of years to have passed between Ann being 12 to being Ann's-age-now than from Ann's-age-now/Mary's-age-then to Mary's 24, which is 18.
Re: How old is Ann?
#45This may help people:
> Mary is 24 years old. She is twice as old as Ann was (12) when Mary was as old (18) as Ann is now (18). How old is Ann?
So 6 years ago, Mary was 18, and Ann was 12.
Today, Mary is twice the age that Ann was (12 * 2) at the time that she (Mary) was 18, making her 24.
What makes it confusing is that the sentence is comparing Mary’s present age with Ann’s past age (which I did not catch until mulling it over a bit).
Re: How old is Ann?
#46Hallucinations like these make it pretty clear that these agents do not really understand or think, IMHO.
"these agents" meaning the people who tried to solve the problem and failed?
Re: How old is Ann?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is more a test of reading comprehension than algebra. Figuring out what the questions is even trying to ask is like 90% of the question.
When I was that age, we practiced a lot of word problems. The folks who wrote the tests really favoured this kind of slightly underhanded logic
They aren't allowed to make the mathematics too difficult so they make up for it by making the questions hard to understand.
Re: How old is Ann?
#48Hallucinations like these make it pretty clear that these agents do not really understand or think, IMHO.
"these agents" meaning the people who tried to solve the problem and failed?
It is well known that humans often fail at thinking. Using that as proof that machines can think only proofs that you’re human.
Re: How old is Ann?
#49Rephrasing it makes it easier to grasp: Mary is 24 years old. When Mary was Ann’s current age, Ann was 12 years old (half Mary’s current age). This makes it a bit easier to realize that Ann’s age has to be right in the middle of 12 and 24.
> This makes it a bit easier to realize that Ann’s age has to be right in the middle of 12 and 24. How did you actually make that deduction? I can only see it by writing down an equation. I can't see anything in the problem that directly implies it.
I imagined that I'm 24 years old and I have a 20 years old brother. When I were his age, he would have been 16 years old.
I also realized that this can be expressed in terms of a two pairs of sibling:
> Mary and Ann are the same age difference as Jane and Claire. Mary is 24 years old. Mary is twice as old as Jane. Claire is as old as Ann. How old is Ann?
This highlights also why it's so confusing:
> Mary is 24 years old. She [Mary, today] is twice as old as Ann was [Ann, past] when Mary was [Mary, past] as old as Ann is [Ann, today] now. How old is Ann?
In one sentence we're comparing past and present ages.
Re: How old is Ann?
#50My approach at parsing this:
There's two point in time with two ages each:
M, M0, and A, A0
Then the sentence can be expressed as:
* M = M0 + X and A = A0 + X and (X is the time difference)
* M = 24 and ("Mary is 24")
* M = 2 * A0 and ("Mary is twice as old as Ann was")
* M0 = A ("Mary was as old as Ann is now")