Darkkeep

via Raymond Johnson

You'd have to have a pretty shitty teacher to get that as an exam question. :)

LOL downloaded the image on the wifes laptop monday night, shes a maths teacher, like me she thinks its a great question, excellant use of probability not being what it appears at first and shes gunna use it.

being nitpicikidy, i think you have wrong attitude to the question blitz.

gillian tells a good story of one class she had where a student got their calculator to give an error. the student was incredulus that a modern electronic device could get an error calculating a maths question, the whole class got involved in the discussion and gillian went on to show students that entering square root of -1 generated an error and since nobody could work it out in maths so they named it an imaginary number, which students thought hillarious.

i only point this out cause i know most of us here are old fogies and many of have kids going through our school system and trying to learn maths, plus being married to a teacher and having a teenage daugher in school gives me more exposure to learning and education. Another plus is that i helped gillian work on all her essays when she did her Hdip for teaching and thaths being modest, gillian will attest to that. (you can see that my ability to preamble on almost any subject at length, and its only being heightened as i delve more and more into management)

It's a good question because it makes you think quite a bit. If you must choose one answer from the 4 given, there is no correct answer. 0% would be the correct answer until it was included in the list of options at which point it would cease to be the correct answer. Take that brain.

justice wrote:i helped gillian work on all her essays when she did her Hdip for teaching and thaths being modest

If one adds "I'm being modest" to a statement, what is the % chance one is actually being modest? :o

[Quote=MoustachioedDictator]If one adds "I'm being modest" to a statement, what is the % chance one is actually being modest? [/Quote]

while generally true, in this specific case it is not, i did most of her essays, it was only right at the end or her year that straight talking gillian grasped the fine art of spewing coherant, intelligent and authoritive bullshit on any given subject. however i dont like boasting and i cant take credit for the core of the content, but it offers a certain kind of challange to produce a decent 5000 word eassy from 10 bullet points. also shes my missus, she needed the help and i was happy to oblige.

[Quote=MoustachioedDictator]If you must choose one answer from the 4 given, there is no correct answer. 0% would be the correct answer until it was included in the list of options at which point it would cease to be the correct answer.[/Quote]
thats not correct at all. reread the question.

suggested

justice wrote:thats not correct at all. reread the question.

Well if you suppose the answer is 25%, then the answer is 50%, but if it's 50%, the answer is 25%. Unless as one internet bod suggested, you limit the choice to only first 3 options, there is no correct answer. No?

this is a tricky question alright.

i was initially confident of the B answer, posted my reply, had doubts. googled it, confirmed my initial thoughts, but i went on to devise a more logical approach (this is my own logic, not from net)

ok to start: question is

[Quote="Question posed by blackboard"]if you choose an answer to this question at random, what is the chance you will be correct.[/Quote]
now by including the wording "what is the chance you will be correct" this is a question about probabilities, therefore each possible outcome has to be examined to correctly determine the proper chance, which is the actual question.
now the logicaly tricky part is here,

to answer the question at random i can only pick 1 of a,b,c or d.
i have a 25% chance of randomly picking A (which gives answer 25%) and i have a 25% change of randomly picking D (which gives answer of 25%)
(the logical fallacy is that if i was to genuinely choose the answer a or d then it is wrong,
but the question doesn't ask this, it asks what are the Chances of picking the right answer, not what is the right anwser)

so now returning to the original question, randomly answering a or d is correct, therefore 50% of my options will give me the right answer.

I'm still going around in logic circles. Look at the options for being correct for this question. A & D are both 25%, so if A or D were going to be the right answer, you'd have a 50% chance of randomly picking the right answer, so they can't be the correct answer. B is 50%, but if that was the right answer, you'd have a 25% chance of it bring the correct answer, so you can't pick B. C is just making up the numbers. I don't think there is a right answer.

I think the numbers in the options are a red herring.

I agree with Blitz that there is no correct answer due to the self-referential nature of the question that causes the answer to change as soon as it's chosen. You have a 50% chance of choosing 25%, but 25% chance of choosing 50%. That said, I think I see Justice's angle, at least, I believe he is treating the question and answer as discrete. It's open to interpretation but my instinct and by my reading of question, there is no answer.