• Lucien [he/him]@mander.xyz
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    2 months ago

    This is a paradox, and I don’t think there is a correct answer, at least not as a letter choice. The correct answer is to explain the paradox.

    • Feydaikin@beehaw.org
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      2 months ago

      You can rationalize your way to exclude all but a last answer, there by making it the right answer.

      Like, seeing as there are two 25% options, so there aren’t four different answers, which means there isn’t a 25% chance. This lead to there only being two options left 50% or 60%. This would seem to make 50% the right answer, but it’s not, because you know the options, so it’s not random, which in turn means you’re not guessing. So you have more that 50% chance of choosing the right answer. So 60% is the closest to a right answer, by bullshitting and gaslighting yourself into thinking you solved question.

      • Didros@beehaw.org
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        2 months ago

        Having been to school I know a teacher did not read this question so tge answer is probably A, B, C, or D. Chosen randomly of course. But you will get credit for 3/4 answers as long as you take the time to talk to the teacher during office hours.

    • zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It is 33% if the answer itself is randomly chosen from 25%, 50%, and 60%. Then you have:

      If the answer is 25%: A 1/2 chance of guessing right

      If the answer is 50%: A 1/4 chance of guessing right

      If the answer is 60%: A 1/4 chance of guessing right

      And 1/3*1/2 + 1/3*1/4 + 1/3*1/4 = 1/3, or 33.333…% chance

      If the answer is randomly chosen from A, B, C, and D (With A or D being picked meaning D or A are also good, so 25% has a 50% chance of being the answer) then your probability of being right changes to 37.5%.

      This would hold up if the question were less purposely obtuse, like asking “What would be the probability of answering the following question correctly if guessing from A, B, C and D randomly, if its answer were also chosen from A, B, C and D at random?”, with the choices being something like “A: A or D, B: B, C: C, D: A or D”

  • sqgl@beehaw.org
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    2 months ago

    It was only the next day that I returned to this post realising that “this question” isn’t even defined.

  • Caveman@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    You can never answer this question correctly. If the correct answer is 25% there’s a 50% chance you guess correctly but that would make the 25% wrong.

    But if the answer is the 50% then it implies that 25% is correct which implies that 50% is wrong.

    We reach a contradiction for both 25% and 50% making the correct answer to make the whole statement truthy 0%.

  • user86223091@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    It’s 0%, because 0% isn’t on the list and therefore you have no chance of picking it. It’s the only answer consistent with itself. All other chances cause a kind of paradox-loop.

    • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 months ago

      Correct - even if you include the (necessary) option of making up your own answer. If you pick a percentage at random, you have a 0% chance of picking 0%.

    • rational_lib@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I agree with 0% but disagree there’s any paradox - every choice is just plain old wrong. Each choice cannot be correct because no percentage reflects the chance of picking that number.

      Ordinarily we’d assume the chance is 25% because in most tests there’s only one right choice. But this one evidently could have more than one right choice, if the choice stated twice was correct - which it isn’t. So there’s no basis for supposing that 25% is correct here, which causes the whole paradox to unravel.

      Now replace 60% with 0%. Maybe that would count as a proper paradox. But I’d still say not really, the answer is 0% - it’s just wrong in the hypothetical situation posed by the question rather than the actual question.

      • user86223091@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Completely agree! In this case there is no real paradox, 0% is a perfectly consistent answer.

        I think if you replace 60% with 0%, you’d get a proper paradox, because now there is a non-zero chance of picking 0% and it’s no longer consistent with itself. It’s similar to the “This statement is false” paradox, where by assuming something is true, it makes it false and vice versa.

  • davidgro@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I asked Google to roll a D4 and it rolled a 4. So my answer (correct or not) when following the directions in the question is the fourth one (D).

  • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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    2 months ago

    It’s probably graded by a computer, and a) or d) is a fake answer, since the automated system doesn’t support multiple right answers.

    I’m going to go with 25% chance if picking random, and a 50% chance if picking between a) and d).
    If it’s graded by a human, the correct answer is f) + u)

  • cholesterol@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Paradoxes aside, if you’re given multiple choices without the guarantee that any of them are correct, you can’t assign a chance of picking the right one at random anyway.