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SithLord13 comments on There are 125 sheep and 5 dogs in a flock. How old is the shepherd? / Math Education - Less Wrong Discussion

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

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Comment author: SithLord13 17 October 2016 12:51:29PM 3 points [-]

I think the issue here might be slightly different than posed. I think the real issue is that children instinctively assume they're running on corrupted hardware. For all priors in math, they've had a solvable problem. They've had problems they couldn't solve, and then been shown it was a mistake on their part. Without good cause, why would they suddenly assume all their priors are wrong, and not just that they're failing to grasp it? Given their priors and information, it's ration to expect that they missed something.

Comment author: James_Miller 17 October 2016 01:00:05PM *  3 points [-]

Yes, I agree. It shows children are trying to guess the teacher's password and are not doing math. Interestingly, when I asked my son this question he said you couldn't find the answer. When I asked how he knew that he said he has seen other math problems where you don't have enough information to solve.