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A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

nytimes.com

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Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#131

Post by reagency »

harperlee wrote: post #41
myNXTact wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amusing that you went to a website on confirmation bias, did the puzzle incorrectly, presumably read the material on confirmation bias, but still suffer from the effects of confirmation bias.

Amusingly human, if I may add. Reading "Thinking, fast and slow", by Daniel Kahneman, one key idea that I got was that even knowing against biases you are very, very likely to suffer from those biases. Disheartening results were gathered from studies done on well-trained psychologists and people prepared for the experiment, to no avail. Can't remember the details right now, but just read the book, it's awesome. Anoth…

You can greatly improve your performance by setting up internal and external reminders to check your assumptions and commo falacies.

Related: read The Checklist Manifesto.

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#132

Post by LoSboccacc »

benihana wrote: post #106
veli_joza wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People familiar with unit testing and test driven development will feel at home with this kind of puzzle. That doesn't mean that they will be less biased in social/political decisions, it just means that this test will fail to prove a point.

I was just writing this out! I believe practice in unit testing is what let me get this question right. I almost submitted n^1, n^2, n^3 before I realized I didn't get any wrong answers and something didn't feel right. I credit this 'instinct' to having written thousands of tests, and trying to make them fail to make sure my tests weren't lying to me.

got tricked even if I tested 1, 1, 1

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#133

Post by mikeash »

Kenji wrote: post #44
tmd wrote: post #7

It responds "No" to (10000000000000000, 10000000000000001, 10000000000000002) so the rule is not so simple after all :)

Good old IEEE 64bit floating point numbers =) That also means that for(i=0;i<j;++i){} doesn't necessarily terminate for an arbitrary j smaller than infinity, which I find hilarious.

I'd prefer an example along the lines of:

    for(i = j; i
With your example it's easy to lose the distinction between "would eventually terminate if you had a fast computer and a lot of time" and "never terminates even in theory." Here, it definitely looks like it should always run two iterations to matter what the numbers are (as long as they're finite), but it doesn't.

Either way, though, it is definitely hilarious!

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#135

Post by mikeash »

phantarch wrote: post #81

Funnily enough, I notice confirmation bias quite a bit in a D&D game I am currently DM of. I'm playing with a group of friends who are big into video games, and as a result they consistently seek resolutions to conflicts in D&D by way of what they know from shooters: kill everything in sight. Yes, it's at times a valid answer, but it's not the only one and it's certainly not the most interesting one. The best way tha…

You must be awfully tempted to constantly give them powerful adversaries who are willing to become friends if given the smallest chance.

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#136

Post by yequalsx »

Math person here. I'm curious to know if anyone used decimal numbers in their tests and if negative numbers were used. The rule is increasing real numbers and one can guess that the rule is increasing numbers without realizing this includes all real numbers and not just integers.

In addition to getting it right did you use an exhaustive set of tests?

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#139

Post by Jugurtha »

ddlatham wrote: post #3

I'm curious to see more about the distribution of questions and answers people had, and how the HN population may differ from the NYT's. There will certainly be self selection bias here, but if you're willing to share how you did with others, please enter it here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17e5BIL0lH8OHsGj89Zdtdl8GeCV... The result summary is visible here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17e5BIL0lH8OHsGj89Zdtdl…

My answer was: "The sequence is of an increasing real variable, where each subsequent value is greater than the preceding value. It's monotonically varying."

When I clicked "I think I know it", nothing happened. I don't want to click their "I don't want to play; just tell me the answer". But it seems like the right answer. I can't answer your form question if it is the right anwer, since I haven't clicked on their link and don't know for a fact whether it is or not.

Although I used the wrong term, it's strictly increasing.

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#140

Post by FilterJoe »

While the HN crowd mostly gets this right when framed as a math puzzle, my guess is that confirmation bias is alive and well in high tech just like in any other field. One example:

Young 20s entrepreneur vs. early 50s entrepreneur. Without knowing anything about either person, which startup is more likely to succeed? Even if you have the business plans for both, and you meet both - which one are you going to be more skeptical about as you evaluate which one of them gets funding?

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