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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

#21

Post by NLips »

ddlatham wrote: post #9
bediger4000 wrote: post #6

The official answer to this puzzle makes a huge assumption: that there is one correct answer. There is not one correct answer. (x, 2x, 4x) gives you a "yes" every time, therefore it is a correct answer, at least as automatically checkable, and there's an infinite number of such tuples. To find a "no" you're reduced to random guessing. That's not a puzzle, that's crap. The confirmation bias material might be true, but…

The puzzle is not "Find a rule that matches everything you tested". It's figure out what rule they are using. It may be true that there are multiple ways to state the rule, such as "x_2 >= x_1 + 1 and x_3 is >= x_1 + 2" but they are equivalent. Try the sequence: 0,0,0. It would give "yes" for (x,2x,4x), but the actual rule gives it "no".

Or make x negative - the rule gives it "no".

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#22

Post by qznc »

> A mere 8 percent heard at least three nos

I guessed correctly with only 2 nos. Since there is no penalty for guessing incorrectly here, I felt safe enough with my theory. I might have checked for more nos, if I had to announce my theory publicly (Twitter, comment, etc). However, I also knew about Confirmation Bias beforehand.

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#23

Post by cabirum »

function judgeSentence(sentence, numNo)

var probablyWrong = ["doubl", "expon", "multipl", "^", "", "power", "two", "2", "twice", "as big", "nth", "rais"];

var seemsRight = ["larger", "increas", "greater", "small", "less", "big", ">", "Been expecting something more interesting than that

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#25

Post by drjesusphd »

bediger4000 wrote: post #6

The official answer to this puzzle makes a huge assumption: that there is one correct answer. There is not one correct answer. (x, 2x, 4x) gives you a "yes" every time, therefore it is a correct answer, at least as automatically checkable, and there's an infinite number of such tuples. To find a "no" you're reduced to random guessing. That's not a puzzle, that's crap. The confirmation bias material might be true, but…

> There is not one correct answer. (x, 2x, 4x) gives you a "yes" every time

Not true. What if x is negative?

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#26

Post by Kenji »

"We’ve chosen a rule that some sequences of three numbers obey — and some do not. Your job is to guess what the rule is."

My mistake was to assume that choosing the first number uniquely defines the next ones in the sequence. Since, you know, like all the sequence puzzles I've seen before worked like that, and I didn't read it rigorously enough. Oh, by the way, the doubling thing is wrong if you use negative numbers (wrong as in it gives false positives, instead of just false negatives). But the problem definition doesn't even tell what set of numbers we're operating on.

Finding the rule the sequences obey is impossible since it could be that all cases follow a simple rule except for one triplet which you're unlikely to find. It's trivially easy to fool the user into finding a wrong rule.

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#28

Post by pron »

[deleted] wrote: post #11

[deleted]

The purpose is not to see if people use randomized inputs, or even if they're capable of analyzing data. It is to see if people are willing to challenge their own notions. The "misleading" sample is then just right.

Even in real life, no discrete categorization hypothesis should be accepted if you've only seen data matching one of the categories.

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#29

Post by 725686 »

That page prints the nyt logo in the javacript console (will probably look messed up here):

       0000000                         000        0000000
     111111111      11111111100          000      111111111
     00000        111111111111111111      00000      000000
     000        1111111111111111111111111100000         000
     000        1111       1111111111111111100          000
     000         11       0     1111111100              000
     000          1      00             1               000
     000               00      00       1               000
     000             000    00000       1               000
  00000            0000  00000000       1                00000
  11111            000 00    000000      000                 11111
  00000          0000      000000     00000              00000
     000        10000      000000      000              0000
     000        00000      000000       1               000
     000        000000     10000        1     0         000
     000        1000000 00              1    00         000
     000         1111111                1 0000          000
     000          1111111100           000000           000
     0000          111111111111111110000000            0000
     111111111        111111111111100000          111111111
       0000000              00000000              0000000
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