this problem generated a lot of traffic last year in the guardian https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/28/did-you... On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 7:07 AM James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
This discussion reminds me of a central defect of multiple-choice tests. If the person taking the test comes up with a "wrong" answer, then it means (very roughly speaking) that the test-taker is either smarter than OR stupider than the test-designer, but from the answer alone it is impossible to determine which.
(Actually, I like Fred Lunnon's way of looking at things: in many cases it's not about "smart" or "stupid", but rather about neurological similarity.)
Jim
On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 8:00 AM, Fred Lunnon <fred.lunnon@gmail.com> wrote:
<< This particular question has been posed to large numbers of people (college students, mostly, because they are readily available and free), and only 10-20% get it right. >>
So what IS "the" answer, and why exactly is it "right" ?
[ Interesting to speculate how a battery of such innocent-looking questions at a job interview could result in a --- possibly unintentional and undetectable --- bias favouring candidates neurologically similar to the examiners! ]
WFL
On 5/5/17, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
Ah, but then there are the folks who are SO trained in mathematics that they immediately see the proof that there is a married person who is looking at a non-married person but they feel that the proof is unsatisfyingly nonconstructive; while they are trying to come up with a nonclassical logic in which it might be possible for there to be no such person, the interrogator insists on an immediate answer, so the mathematician says "I think the answer is 'I don't know,' but I'm not sure."
Jim
On Friday, May 5, 2017, Gareth McCaughan <gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> wrote:
On 05/05/2017 09:36, Victor Miller wrote:
Is there some trick? If Linda is married, then the Linda-John pair is the
married/not married pair. If Linda isn't married then the Paul/lLinda pair is the one.
The only trick is that a surprising number of people, even rather clever people, get only as far as figuring out that they can't tell whether L&J are married nor whether P&L are married, and conclude that the answer to the question is no.
I think it likely that training in mathematics correlates strongly with answering this correctly. I am not sure how the explanation for this, if I'm right, should be divided between the effect of learning about logic and the effect of being the sort of person who is willing to spend time learning about logic.
-- g
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