Potato paradox
en.wikipedia.org
Potato paradox
1–10 of 142 posts
Re: Potato paradox
#2This isn't a paradox at all. It's a slightly non-intuitive result.
Re: Potato paradox
#3Neat. This bumps up my list of food-related maths from 3 to 4. So far:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich_theorem
Re: Potato paradox
#4Why is this a "paradox"? Not sure what this applies to either. It's not even counterintuitive.
Re: Potato paradox
#5A much more important example of this than "martian potatoes" is uranium enrichment.
Natural uranium is ~1% U235; bombs need 90+% U235. So when you've enriched it from 1% to 2% it doesn't seem like you've made a lot of progress towards 90.
If instead of enriching U235 you think of it as eliminating U238, though, then you've done half of the work.
Re: Potato paradox
#6Why is this a "paradox"? Not sure what this applies to either. It's not even counterintuitive.
[deleted]
Re: Potato paradox
#7Interesting
Re: Potato paradox
#8Neat. This bumps up my list of food-related maths from 3 to 4. So far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_cake_representation
You can add https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake_sorting
Re: Potato paradox
#9Why is this a "paradox"? Not sure what this applies to either. It's not even counterintuitive.
As stated in the article, this is an example of a veridical paradox under Quine's classification of paradoxes. Which, a quick link following reveals as…
A veridical paradox produces a result that appears absurd but is demonstrated to be true nevertheless.
Amazing what philosophers will get up to.
Re: Potato paradox
#10The thing the article doesn't point out is why it seems unintuitive.
If you phrased the question as "You have N pounds of potatoes", or with a specific number other than 100, it would come across as less unintuitive. As you read, you see "100 lbs", and "99%", so percents and potato components are both out of 100. So then you see 98%, which is 98/100...