This is a puzzle that Peter gave to me. He read about it on the Skeptics Dictionary, and apparently a prof gave the problem to a class of 100 students and less than ten of them got it right.
You're working with cards. Each card has a number on one side and a letter on the other side. You have four of the cards in front of you. They display A B 4 7. In order to test the statement "If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side," which cards would you _have_ to turn over?
Let's hear your answers! Bonus points if you can explain them!
(For the record, I got it correct right away. Peter made a mistake. So I'm kinda bragging. So sue me. ^_^)
5 comments:
Why would you _HAVE_ to turn any of them over? I don't understand the question.
But I guess you would have to turn over the A to see if there's an even number on the back of it, and turn over the 4 to see if there's a vowel on the back of that one. The statement doesn't say that anything about consonants or odd numbers, so you wouldn't have to turn either of the other cards over. That's my guess. I suck at logical things, by the way.
A and 7. I'm not explaining why - I only came online after tossing and turning in bed! But after reading the question, I just don't see how turning over the others would make any sense.
Well, no bonus points for Joyce. She was right, though. Explaning it in prose is long and confusing, but what it boils down to is the truth table of "If-Then" statements. There are four versiona of that table, based on whether the antecedent and conclusion are correct of not, and the one version that disproves the statement is if the antecedent is correct but the conclusion is false. This way, you only have to test that one version and not the other three, hence it being the simplest way to test the statement.
I like my answer better, as I have NO IDEA what yours means:):):)
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