I thought..
F(n + 1) = n * 2A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
71–80 of 311 posts
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#72I'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…
Your last question is "have you seen a test about confirmation bias before?" But the text of this test says that it's about "why no-one likes to be wrong", which means it's pretty obviously about confirmation bias (and therefore that the test-taker should be wary about just confirming their first intuition).
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#73I think that the "quick" adjective in the title is purposeful misleading. You are supposed to learn quickly the most general rule, but that is not so easy because there are many possible rules that could fit such a pattern. It seems that you should be rewarded for solving the puzzle quickly and then you fall in the trap. I propose to change the title to "A puzzle to test your Generalization Abilities", and state clea…
Maybe it should be "a puzzle many people already know the answer to" in which case the conclusion and results are already obviously biased.
I was able to solve the puzzle without testing any numbers at all. Which really skews the relevance of "only nine percent of people saw three 'no's before answering."
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#74I got this wrong, but oddly enough my first attempt was a No. I tried, "6, 1, 8" After that, I went with doubling and it worked 3 times with various sizes of number, so I went with that. Double bonus points if you can guess what I was testing with the first sequence (which the given numbers do satisfy).
Were you guessing random area codes of midwestern states? :)
Hah! No, I'm not American :)
But, in case no-one guesses, the answer is (rot13):
erirefr nycunorgvpny beqre
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#75Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#76I'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…
Intersting that the split of correct/wrong answers from the HN crowd is 78%/22% - the exact opposite of the general population : 22% / 78%! The HN community does think different :)
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#77That 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 0000…
Every nytimes.com page displays that in the JS console.
Putting your engineer hiring notices under the hood is becoming a common "Easter-egg" practice. It's also a form of targeted recruitment advertising - the only people who see it are your target audience.
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#78"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…
I think it's a reasonable mistake.
Most people will make assumptions about what's required based on previous experience. And hardly anyone will have previous experience where a question formatted in this way isn't asking you to find a series rule.
That's not quite the same thing as confirmation bias. With a bias you're just as likely to discount significant evidence as you are to mismodel the problem space.
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#79I remembered this puzzle from HPMOR, but either way this is just writing a unit test.
Having just re-read HPMOR a few weeks ago, I could answer it right away, but there was actually a difference from HPMOR's version, which required three positive increasing numbers, while this allowed negatives.
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#80Seems busted now - clicking the "I think I know" button does nothing. I thought the answer was:
Let the first number be x. If x is 0, then the second number is 1. Otherwise, the second number is two times the absolute value of x. The third number is 2 times the value of the second number.