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Post by Weyland on Jun 11, 2010 13:07:33 GMT
This stuff has just been on R4's More or Less programme, and they're putting explanations up on their web-page. There is disagreement about the Tuesday thing.
Confusion is caused by the form of the initial questions and the ability of English to be ambiguous. It needs to be expressed more precisely, otherwise it's not clear whether it's past or future events that are being discussed.
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Post by everso on Jun 11, 2010 22:08:08 GMT
Can someone please pass me my sal volatile?
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Post by Weyland on Jun 12, 2010 8:37:23 GMT
Can someone please pass me my sal volatile? I got a dose of sal volatile once, when I fainted in church, circa 1955. Once was enough. Never fainted again. Good deterrent.
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Post by alanseago on Jun 12, 2010 15:04:39 GMT
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Post by everso on Jun 13, 2010 10:25:32 GMT
What happened to him? Did he die? He was a bit of a dish.
[Waits for reply from Alan to the effect that Sal married a lady from the Phillippines and moved to France]
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Post by housesparrow on Jun 18, 2010 18:00:12 GMT
It is the same with question 2: there is more than one way of looking at it. If, having found your girl, you then find she is born on a Tuesday, the odds are the same re her having a sister. If you ask the odds of there being two girls when one of them must be a girl born on a Tuesday, the answer is (apparently ) quite different. I have yet to get my head round it. Ooh...More or Less agrees with me! www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00smtq7Scroll to the last 10 minutes unless you want to find our who really should have been picked as England's goalie!!
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Post by rjpageuk on Jun 19, 2010 22:06:28 GMT
It is the same with question 2: there is more than one way of looking at it. If, having found your girl, you then find she is born on a Tuesday, the odds are the same re her having a sister. If you ask the odds of there being two girls when one of them must be a girl born on a Tuesday, the answer is (apparently ) quite different. I have yet to get my head round it. Ooh...More or Less agrees with me! www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00smtq7Scroll to the last 10 minutes unless you want to find our who really should have been picked as England's goalie!! Sorry I ended up getting busy on holiday and couldnt catch up in this thread but are you happy about everything now? There are certainly interpretation issues with the problem but more because of what we expect the question to be asking (given general context) rather than what it really does ask. I went into detail in this on the MCL thread to see if JUQ could understand what I was saying, and I am about to go back there to see how he got on!
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Post by housesparrow on Jun 20, 2010 7:22:52 GMT
I think the question is phrased too vaguely to determine what it is really asking. That is the point that was made in the programme; it is open to interpretation. Isn't that the point JUQ is making? I've rather lst track of that discussion.
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