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A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

nytimes.com

41–50 of 311 posts

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#41

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…

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. Another good one was "Influence" by Cialdini, but they gave you tips on trying to avoid those biases that, upon reading Kahneman, I don't think anymore that are very useful.

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#43

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?

My second guess was 0, 0, 0. My third was -1, -2, -4.

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#44
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.

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#45
post #7

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

Any idea why? Could it be an error from the input being too large? Or is there some other magic at work here...

Nedit: One of the other responses nailed it. IEEE standards on 64 bit fp ops

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#46
post #39
post #11

[deleted]

>In order to prove their point effectively without falling in the same trap they are pointing, they should conduct the same experiment with a random example each time, not one especially created to mislead the experimentee. This is the point though - we all have preexisting beliefs, and we often don't critically question those beliefs. The [x,2x,4x] pattern injected into our minds by nytimes is playing the part of th…

[deleted]

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#48

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…

(x,2x,4x) does not actually give a "yes" every time. In particular, it won't work if x is negative. But, in that case, (4x,2x,x) will work.

Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

#50
post #22

> 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.

I guessed correctly with only one no.

You can enter all kinds of crazy random sequences which only have The Rule in common and get a yes, which seemed to be enough assurance. If you're trying to get it to say "no" but failing, is that still confirmation bias? Doesn't sound like it.

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