Fuck Professor Layton

[Fluffyumpkins]

Here's a classic taken from Wikipedia. Try and solve it yourself before looking up the answer.

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1 [but the door is not opened], and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Note: Unless you are Mike, you probably don't want a goat.

Choose door #2.

I added a bit. Why would you take door #2?

[SoDeepPolaris]

I added a bit. Why would you take door #2?

SPOILER ALERT MADE IT HARD TO READ SO PEOPLE GLANCING WON'T BE LIKE "AW DAMMIT SDP."

Possible layout of prizes is as such:
D1 D2 D3
X Y Y
Y X Y
Y Y X

Mr. Announcer-man reveals either door 2 or 3 (a non-X door).

Sticking with door #1 will give you a 33% chance of getting X (car, hot Russian bride, whatever). Your decision is made without knowing the host would reveal a Y (1/3,1/3,1/3). Switching from your original choice doubles your chance of getting X. I can show the conditional and marginal probability math behind it but the logical explanation should suffice.

[DAVE101]

MERK WAS MY GUESS RIGHT? I DON'T LIKE FLUFFYPUMPKIN'S QUESTION I JUST WANT TO SOLVE YOURS.

[Fluffyumpkins]

IndyDDR needs a spoiler tag.

Actually white on quoted text seems to work just fine. Hot dog!

[DAVE101]

http://www.mathcats.com/explore/river/crossing.html

Wasn't too hard. Goat -> Come back empty -> Cabbage -> Come back with goat -> Wolf -> Come back empty -> Goat

The trick here is the key phrase that these things will murder each other when they are alone.

A clock chimes 5 times in 4 seconds. How many times will it chime in 10 seconds?

Mathematically It'd be twelve if the "5x in 4 sec" is a consistent rate. But if the question implies it will chime 5 times for seconds from now (meaning it's four seconds from 5 o'clock), then it will chime 0 times in 10 seconds.

MERK AM I RIGHT?!?!?! I MUST KNOW THE ANSWER.

[Merk]

Sorry for the delay. On my days off work I'm hardly at a computer so it's hard for me to post!

The answer is 11 chimes. The reasoning here is that the clock chimes once per second starting at zero seconds.

The answer is completely arbitrary because the question doesn't suggest that there is any sort of regularity or pattern to the chiming and the "gotcha" comes from human intuition to try and create a recognizable pattern from bits and piece of information. Most people would say the answer is twelve since ((5/4) * 10) = 12.5 and you can't half one half of a chime.

I guess the lesson here is that if you ask a vague question then you should expect a solid answer and some pissed off people when you pull the wool over their eyes when you go "DURR HURR THE CLOCK ACTUALLY CHIMES AT RANDOM INTERVALS EVERY FOUR SECONDS YOU ARE AN ASPIE"

[DAVE101]

What happened to this thread, did you all abandon the quest for knowledge and wisdom?

[Merk]

I think we were all waiting for your reaction to the answer to that dumb clock question before going forward with this thread!

[DAVE101]

Well that answer isn't mathematically correct if it chimes once per second. It would be 4 in 4 seconds and 10 in 10 seconds, since you are measuring the time from 0.0-4.0, and the clock wouldn't chime until after it hits 4.0. If it does, it chimes more than once per second and the answer of 12 or 12.5 would be correct.

The question was made by someone thinking they're clever, but probably barely passed high school. Can we do a new one now?

[Merk]

I thought this was a stretch when I saw this, but:

What is special about the following sequence of numbers?
8 5 4 9 1 7 6 10 3 2 0


HINT: It has nothing to do with the numbers themselves.

[DAVE101]

I know better than to try math with these things.

[ImuyumI]

I know

[DAVE101]

Good, I've got one I'd like to try. Someone give me a number.

[ImuyumI]

4,398,256,487,568,291,209

[DAVE101]

I guess everyone is done with Merk's sequence. I came to the conclusion that the numbers are in alphabetical order.

ImuyumI, that number would take too long. It's doable, but I'd prefer something that's two digits.