kithpendragon comments on There are 125 sheep and 5 dogs in a flock. How old is the shepherd? / Math Education - Less Wrong

6 Post author: James_Miller 17 October 2016 12:12AM

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Comment author: kithpendragon 17 October 2016 12:51:35AM *  4 points [-]

I wonder how my coworkers will do...

EDIT (2016.10.21): In case anybody is interested, the results with my coworkers are...

  • 6 variations of "I don't know" with one outright "You didn't give me any information about the shepherd... he could be any age"

  • 4 numeric answers ranging from 5 to 35

  • 1 got distracted and never answered the question

I've got a party to attend tomorrow, we'll see if they do better.

Comment author: Romashka 17 October 2016 07:33:22AM 0 points [-]

At least in the boat problem one can give an interval estimate:)

Seriously, though, this is interesting stuff. I thought about writing a post on 'different assumptions' like this, like when you have explained to a student how to calculate the molecular mass of a compound, show them the very rudiments of mass spectrometry theory and watch them try to reconcile the idea of a structured molecule (or whatever it is called in salts) with the idea of just totalling the nuclons and dividing by the charge. I had problems with it when I had to read about it.

Or there's another case of diatoms' shells inheritance, compared to Mendelian genetics.

If anyone has an idea of another 'similar-but-not-similar' pair of problems, please let me/us know.