@valleyforge yes, yes you are.

@freemo ah

@freemo we should all just start using postfix notation. It makes computing easier

@klonoavirus It is the correct answer.

@freemo ...oh goddammit

I got it just now

@klonoavirus lol

@vovanium thats a multiplication sign :)

@curt huh?

@freemo

Pick one. 😄

@curt :) only one is correct :)

@freemo 😆

@sacha So your saying the answer in the post is correct?

@freemo It took me a couple of minutes to figure out what is going on; if you were pulling my leg, what the different math notations were, if I have become old and stale and then it dawned on me that not all math notations were in the line #3 but continued until the hashtag.

tl;dr: yes

@sacha hahaha indeed :) Easy mistake to make, but hey, thats the joke.

@freemo You may have seen this one from one of the more disreputable instances of the FediVerse, but it took me a while and a chat with a bunch of my university enlightened friends to figure out what the answer was.

@sacha I have not seen this one.. let me run through it real quick. though keep in mind it is possible it may not have an answer as there are setups like this that of course could be paradoxical.

@freemo I can spoil it for you if you wish. But my guess is you'll figure it out really soon.

@sacha So a few seconds after i said that I realize, the answer is undefined.. a question and a correct answer isnt really expressed here.. only way there is an answer is if you assume some number of correct answers.. like if i assume no answers are correct inherently then C, obviously..

It would be like asking "What is the correct answer to this question: cow or horse?"

@sacha Now what i can do is select each answer until one creates a logical consistancy, but that doesnt mean it is actually correct.

@sacha I think what we have going on here is the question just is worded poorly but is inferring another question... what it should say is.

"there is some unknown question to which 0 or more of the choices A to D are correct for. The question and the answers are not provided. Next to each of the letters is a percentage, the correct answers have a percentage next to it that is the correct percentage for picking a correct answer at random, the other have incorrect values next to them. From this information determine which is the correct answer"..

That is what it **intends** the question to be. But as worded, strictly speaking is not really worded correctly.

@sacha Now if we take the form of the question I just stated, which is really what they are trying to say here, then it is solvable.

@freemo And with that you summarized hours of a bunch of guys time in a couple of minutes. This said, I think its easy to see why this would frustrate the hell out of Joe Average. 😅

@sacha Thats just because im armed with math.. this is actually a more convoluted form of Russels paradox

For example imagine the following:

Which answer is correct:

A) B is incorrect
B) A is correct

@sacha There are forms of the question that we can infer have an answer through logical consistency though.. for example

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

We could infer both A and B are correct due to being logically consistent.. though still has the problem that the actual question or answer wasnt actually asserted so we really cant say its an answer.

@freemo @sacha Right, ok, I understand what you mean now. We can infer that "50%" is the correct answer, but the implied question is "What is the correct answer?", so it's circular.

@clacke @freemo Yeah, its one of those self-referential paradoxes. 😅

@sacha

Paradoxes dont even come into play until you throw in possible answers.. The question itself is just a self-referential question without enough information to answer it.

Like this is a self referential question that is a paradox "This statement is false. Is the previous statement true?"

However in this case the question itself has no paradox it is just amiguous and self referential like this: "What is the answer to this question?"

@clacke

@sacha So with that said C can not be the answer because it implies no answers are correct, so C is ruled out. B can likewise be ruled out since it implies two of the answers are both correct, but B is the only one labeled as 50% so if it were the correct answer it would have to be in two places. You cant select B with a 50% chance, ergo B can not be the correct answer.

Now if one answer and only one answer were correct then we would have 25% as the correct answer. but both A and D have the correct answer, in that case adn thus actually has 50% chance, and thus is also paradoxical.

Ergo with the choices given none of the answers can create a logical consistency. Therefore we have a aprdoxical question that has no answer. in its original form, in the form i asked it however either A or D might be the answer but we have no way which is correct or if either are correct

@freemo @sacha I don't see the mistake, can you explain it some other way?

The question is "this question", "What is the chance that you will be correct?", and the answer depends on what the answers are. With that follows your reasoning below, which shows that with the answers given, there is no correct answer.

@clacke

"what is the chance that you be correct?" is a question sure, but it is equivalent to saying "What is the correct answer? 5 or cat?"

The question itself isnt complete.

Think of it outside of being a multiple choice question to see why:

"What is the chance you will answer this question correctly?" I dont provide you any choices, I expect you to verbalize an answer, whats the answer? The answer is "You did not give me enough information to answer the question".. if i provide multiple choices to the question those choices do not add additional information to the question, you arent actually answering the question all you can do is rule out paradoxical answers, but even if you manage to rule out all but one paradoxical answers it doesnt mean the one you are left with is "correct" since the original question didnt provide enough information.

@sacha

@freemo I ended up explaining it like this using simple terms:

" A, B, C and D are variables. The values they hold are just that.. values. Something we assign meaning to. "25%", "0%" en "50%" can mean anything really. We just take it at face value. When we think with 25% is on quarter you end up in the paradox we outlined earlier. Because there is no mention of what constitutes a correct answer and we make assumptions based on face value of what A, B, C and D mean we make this mistake. "

@freemo Mind you, at some point we had two devs coding for-loops in PHP and Python getting different results trying to answer this question and to prove a point. =)

@sacha Part of the joke though is that 5 is the answer many people would get who dont know order of operations. So it seems like a plausible wrong answer, which makes it easier to not think past that and to just assume the OP doesnt know their order of operations.

@freemo I made the mistake about the placement of the exclamation mark for factorials. ( I until 5 minutes ago) had the notion that its before the value that needs some tlc.

@sacha Easy enough mistake to make i suppose.