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POINTLESS THREAD III: ESCAPE FROM RAPTOR MOUNTAIN AGAIN

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Sorflakne:
Kenyan breaks Boston Marathon record.

Carl-E:

--- Quote from: pwhodges on 06 Nov 2011, 15:40 ---That won't change anything.  The point is simply that no answer appears with its own probability, and that would remain true.

Now consider:

--- Code: ---A: 50%
B: 25%
C: 50%
D: 75%
--- End code ---

--- End quote ---

That's really no better...  B is correct, but so are either A or C, so you really have a 75% chance of being right, but that makes D correct, but the chance of picking that one is 25% and we're back to B again. 

Get rid of one of the 50's and it'll work.  Better yet,

A) 0%
B) 25%
C) 50%
D) 75%

then see how many pick A...

look out! Ninjas!:
I figured having two identical and correct answers was part of the joke.

Zingoleb:
Oh! I remember seeing my friend post this on Facebook. It's kind of a Hofstadter sort of Strange Loop - it's recursive logic. It's actually really simple.

The chance of choosing the right answer is 1 in 4 - 25%. But since there's two choices for 25%, the chance is actually 50% - but since there's only a one in four chance of choosing 50%, the answer is *really* 25% - but since there's two 25% answers, that means the real real answer is actually 50%.  . .

Carl-E:
Exactly.  So the probabiity of choosing the correct answer epended on which answer you chose, and when chosen, the answer would be different.  That's why 0% was the actual probability with the original choices - you're fucked no matter what. 

Paul's option wasn't really any better! 

Unfortunately, mine works, which makes it much less entertaining.  Until you grade them, that is.  then you find that less than 25% will get the right answer - generally, students do worse than random on probability questions! 


I really  hate multiple guess questions...

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