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Author | Topic: Getting to No | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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As some might have guessed, the title of this thread is a play on the book title Getting to Yes. Today's NYT has an illustrative little puzzle (How Good Are You at Solving Problems?) that highlights one of the most important tenets of science, carefully exploring all the ways you might be wrong.
How many "No's" will you get before deciding you know the answer? --Percy
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1.61803 Member (Idle past 1533 days) Posts: 2928 From: Lone Star State USA Joined: |
Good information Percy.
I got two "yes" on my sequence of numbers and got it wrong. I wont be a spoiler so I wont comment further other than to say I am continually looking for complicated answers to simple questions. "You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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It took me longer to figure out how the @#$%ing interface worked than to solve the puzzle.
I also overthought the problem and got an over-specific solution. I didn't get any no's.
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Phat Member Posts: 18348 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0
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I thought I had it right until realizing that I had jumped to a conclusion. My test numbers were simply confirmation bias for my preconceived conclusion.
Then I noted that the article said quote:I did exactly that. God created war so that Americans would learn geography. —Mark Twain "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
I got four yeses and three nos before I committed to a solution. I use a very similar problem to test the reasoning of students I tutor for the SAT.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams |
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Jon Inactive Member |
My answer was word-for-word what they gave.
Was that part of the experiment or am I just that good? I guessed eight times and got three nos.Love your enemies! |
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Damn I'm good. It only took me three "yes"s to get the wrong answer.
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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I lost the page where I entered my guesses, but I had a number of no's. I checked integers, decimals, negative values and constants like pi and e (didn't accept them, only accepts properly formatted numbers). It doesn't have infinite precision - for example, it will give this a no:
1.0000000000000000000000001 1.0000000000000000000000002 1.0000000000000000000000003 Given this, now what's the rule? --Percy
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2587 From: massachusetts US Joined: Member Rating: 6.4 |
Did you make sure to try some negative progressions in both directions and one across 0.0? The answer was extremely simple. But yes the precision you pointed out was a defect in the atof() they used.
- xongsmith, 5.7d
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
Am I better or worse for getting a wrong answer after 4 yeses? It is educational( about me)
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Well, now that you mention it according to the writeup you received more positive feedback with your 4 yeses than I did with my 3. I guess you got more out of it than did I. You did better.
All of a sudden I'm not feeling so good about this.
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
xongsmith writes: Did you make sure to try some negative progressions in both directions and one across 0.0? Yes. But no matter how many tests we make there's always the possibility of exceptions, e.g., their test could be:
if (a < b && b < c && a != 1.2345)... In which case the rule would be, "Each number is greater than the one before and the first number cannot be 1.2345." --Percy
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subbie Member (Idle past 1284 days) Posts: 3509 Joined:
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And isn't that EXACTLY like science? No matter how confident we feel in our explanations, and how much success we've had, it's always possible that we fail the next test and have to try again.
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate Howling about evidence is a conversation stopper, and it never stops to think if the claim could possibly be true -- foreveryoung
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1434 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Well I guess my bias was positive integers, but still ended up with the correct rule (their confirmation) -- 3 yes then one no before I committed.
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NoNukes Inactive Member
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Well I guess my bias was positive integers, but still ended up with the correct rule (their confirmation) -- 3 yes then one no before I committed. Some yes answers are just as good at defeating confirmation bias as no questions. Just trying 1, 2, 3 is enough to convince you that the doubling rule is wrong. We also make some assumptions about how complex the rule is likely to be. I did not try any decimal numbers or negative numbers. I did use zero. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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