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Posted on 04/16/2015 9:29:47 AM PDT by QT3.14
One word problem from a Singaporean school exam briefly became the talk of the Internet last weekend....[Snip]... The puzzle went viral across the country, with people ranging from perplexed adults to eager teenagers grappling with the simple question: "So when is Cheryl's birthday?"
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
It involves no math whatsoever.
Your reasoning is more or less right, except that the crucial information Albert provides in the first step is not that he does not know, but that he knows Bernard does not either — it is this that communicates to Bernard that the month is not one of those with a unique day number in the list, not the fact that Albert does not know.
“It’s a logic problem.”
Even worse. Ask a woman a simple question and she tries to humiliate you. No thanks, never mind.
“It involves no math whatsoever.”
It involves numbers. Close enough.
Who shot JR?
Is the truth really out there?
Better question: Who killed Vince Foster? ;)
File that under "sentences that will get a guy killed."
Wrong. Most of what professional mathematicians do is logical reasoning about patterns to draw conclusions supported by proofs. I'm always grimly amused by the assertion on Sudoku puzzles that "no math is required" when the whole exercise of solving one is providing a constructive existence and uniqueness proof.
June 18
OK, I admit I'm old and grumpy and all, but just what in the hell is that sentence supposed to mean? Be kind now. I'm really not a bad guy. Honest.
The proposer of a Sudoku puzzle is implicitly asserting that there is a way to fill in the blank boxes with certain properties (existence) and that there is only one way to do so (uniqueness). Solving the puzzle proves the implicit assertion by providing a construction for the unique completion.
In mathematics there are both non-constructive existence proofs (often using the Axiom of Choice), and constructive existence proofs (which actually construct an example of what is asserted to exist). Usually when a constructive existence proof is given of a thing that is unique, there is very little extra work needed to show its uniqueness.
I mean July 17 of course.
*headpalm*
This problem is similar to a Sudoku puzzle in that it is a pure LOGIC problem. Professional mathematicians may employ logical reasoning skills to find patterns, but that doesn’t make the logic that they use “math.”
Galileo: “The universe is written in the language of mathematics.”
I missed a girlfriend’s birthday in 1987. March 28th. I haven’t heard from her since 1992 but I still remember that date.
Sorry, I’m pulling rank on this one. I am a professional mathematician, and as one of my grad school professors once said in reply to an undergraduate asking, “Will there be proofs on the test or will it be all math?”:
MATHEMATICS IS PROOFS!
Sorry, I’m a former high school mathematics teacher. Doing logic problems involving numbers doesn’t make them math. Logic problems like these require deductive reasoning skills, not mathematical ability. Deductive reasoning is a discipline of logic, which is taught in university philosophy departments, consistent with its origins with Aristotle.
You are referring to mathematical induction, which crosses over into deductive reasoning, but doesn’t encompass it.
May 19. Bernard knew the day but not month. The only unique day is the 19th.
Ther is also only one 18
No, I’m not referring to mathematical induction (which is a particular method of proof applicable to the natural numbers, or more generally well-ordered sets), I am referring to what mathematicians actually do. Almost all published mathematical research consists of proofs and general constructions. Very little involves calculations, which are usually the routine working out of instances of things mathematicians did in general, and are generally done by non-mathematicians, or even machines. My old grad school professor was deliberately using the asymmetry in the natural language use of “is” when he said, “Mathematics is proofs,” rather than “,Proofs are mathematics,” and he meant what he said.
BTW we mathematicians don’t think much of Aristotle — he got quantification over empty families wrong, and gave a mathematical description of physics that he could have debunked by watching his student Alexander’s soldiers loosing a volley of arrows or sling stones.
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