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"We’ve chosen a rule that some sequences of three numbers obey — and some do not. Your job is to guess what the rule is." My mistake was to assume that choosin
by Kenji 11y ago
"We’ve chosen a rule that some sequences of three numbers obey — and some do not. Your job is to guess what the rule is."
My mistake was to assume that choosing the first number uniquely defines the next ones in the sequence. Since, you know, like all the sequence puzzles I've seen before worked like that, and I didn't read it rigorously enough. Oh, by the way, the doubling thing is wrong if you use negative numbers (wrong as in it gives false positives, instead of just false negatives). But the problem definition doesn't even tell what set of numbers we're operating on.
Finding the rule the sequences obey is impossible since it could be that all cases follow a simple rule except for one triplet which you're unlikely to find. It's trivially easy to fool the user into finding a wrong rule.
- mikehawkins 11y agoSame here - I was also guilty of feeling a bit clever and avoiding the obvious "oh, the numbers double every time" answer. So, when I found out that if the spelling of each number was one letter longer (4 = four letters, 8 = five letters, 11 = six) I got smug, and didn't bother testing further. Good article - and a humbling experience. :)
- TylerE 11y agoI went for the slightly more clever "series of powers" after 3/9/27 validated.
- dllthomas 11y agoThat was a hypothesis I considered, as was x,2x,4x. Invalidated both of those, and ultimately drew the intended conclusion (which is not quite "correct", given javascript numeric precision issues).
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- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoI think it's a reasonable mistake. Most people will make assumptions about what's required based on previous experience. And hardly anyone will have previous experience where a question formatted in this way isn't asking you to find a series rule. That's not quite the same thing as confirmation bias. With a bias you're just as likely to discount significant evidence as you are to mismodel the problem space.
- DougBTX 11y ago> It's trivially easy to fool the user into finding a wrong rule. While that's true, the real thing being tested is the user's readiness to prove themselves wrong.
- the_af 11y agoIt is true that, in general, this quiz is impossible to guess, for the reasons you explain. But in this case -- which is the main point of the article -- it was actually a trivial rule. No tricks, no special cases. The real purpose wasn't for you to find the actual rule, but to learn about your biases. The only trick here lies in the human mind, and its tendency to validate patterns (and claim an early victory) instead of trying to refute them.
- IshKebab 11y agoYeah I thought it would be something like "Numbers must strictly increase unless the first number is 15326". Then the point of the article would be that some government rules are not well defined.