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Topic: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability (Read 15676 times) |
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Mixster
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Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« on: Jul 25th, 2002, 2:41am » |
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I'm going out on a limb on this one, but typically the bigger the feet, the older the person... Am I right here? 
-Mixster
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a girl
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #1 on: Jul 25th, 2002, 7:18pm » |
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that was the clever answer i arrived at; the idea that with age you are exposed to more vocabulary, more books, and more spelling instruction.
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Adam Hanig
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #2 on: Jul 27th, 2002, 10:03am » |
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I arrived at the same answer. But what happens when people get older? I doubt their feet shrink, and might possibly continue to grow, but the person definately gets stupider. This question might have worked before the baby boomers became senile, but once they do, it could even become and 'inverse' (flinches at economists misinterpreation of math) or negative relationship, on average.
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william wu
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #3 on: Jul 27th, 2002, 1:56pm » |
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on Jul 27th, 2002, 10:03am, Adam Hanig wrote:| I arrived at the same answer. But what happens when people get older? I doubt their feet shrink, and might possibly continue to grow, but the person definately gets stupider. |
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Yea, it's probably a curvilinear graph. Increasing linearly, then approaching a horizontal asymptote, and finally there's some sinking toward the end.
This was one of the riddles I was challenged with to get into an engineering society on campus.
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cnmne
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #4 on: Jul 30th, 2002, 1:40pm » |
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I dont think senility would account for an overall lowering in the spelling ability of people with fixed size feet, because the ability of each new generation should (hopefully) make up for it. Of course, with public schools today it is hard to say.
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Brion
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #5 on: Jul 30th, 2002, 2:43pm » |
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My approach was a much more practical, physical approach that deals with the physical stamina of the person. Needless to say I arrived at a completely differnet reason than all you people. Obviously since there aren't any answers posted, no one is necessarily right or wrong. And at the behest of the creator of this site, William Wu, I'm not going to be explicit in my answer, but what I've said should give you enough of a clue to figure out what I think the correlation is.
Cheers!
Brion
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Ion Rush
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #6 on: Jul 31st, 2002, 9:43pm » |
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there is a classic example from statistics where they say a study shows that, in kids ages 3-5 as the amount of cavities increases, so does spelling ability. Should we feed kids sugar to make the more verbal, or should we shelter them from difficult words for the sake of dental health.
then the concept of correlation and causation is brought in.
older kids are more likely to have both a larger vocabulary and a higher cavity count
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MattyDK23
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #7 on: Aug 13th, 2002, 8:21pm » |
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Umm...why should age make a difference? If you're getting older, shouldn't you be entering spelling bees for your own age? I doubt that a University student with size 13 feet is going to be entering a grade 3 spelling bee with kids with size 4 feet...
It'd be like a heavyweight boxer boxing in flyweight matches...
Therefore, as you age and your feet grow, by this argument, you'll probably be matched up against people with roughly your own skill level.
Personally...I have no idea. Maybe with a bigger foot you can just kick some...
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Mongolian_Beef
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #8 on: Aug 13th, 2002, 8:33pm » |
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this problem stereotypes so my answer does too. the answer should be that larger feet till about age 20 or so is an indication of being older and thus an indication of being able to spell more proficiently. the answer appears to rely heavily on a correlation between foot size and intellectual maturity which only works for so long as pointed out previously. as to the administrators comments regarding the appearance of the graph im not so sure. athletes i.e. shaq tend to have huge feet. thus the graph is more of a bell curve with best spelling ability probably among those with size 10 mens shoes.
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rfeague
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #9 on: Sep 7th, 2002, 12:40pm » |
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Note that there's nothing in the puzzle that says that the relationship is linear. So all this stuff about what happens at various ages is irrelevant, as long as we agree there is no significant part of life where an inverse correlation exists to offset the positive correlation during childhood.
Also, the point about doing spelling bees with one's own age isn't necessarily relevant, because it's unclear how "performance" is measured. If you take performance to mean number of words a person can spell correctly, then the other people in the bee or test are not relevant.
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Seth M
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #10 on: Sep 19th, 2002, 2:22pm » |
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My take is this:
Bigger the feet, better the understanding.
But that's sort of off the wall for an actual logic puzzle.
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thelonious
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #11 on: Oct 22nd, 2002, 8:21pm » |
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It's all about thinking on your feet.
Or at least, how comfortable you are doing this for long periods.
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Brian Lee
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #12 on: Nov 7th, 2002, 12:55am » |
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How about, the larger the feet, the longer the male sex organ, thus the higher level of confidence?
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Amelia
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #13 on: Nov 15th, 2002, 1:18pm » |
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HOw about this. The study was only conducted on childern in from grade 1-6. Why should we assume this includes all people.
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TimMann
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #14 on: Nov 15th, 2002, 7:15pm » |
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If Brian Lee is right, remind me never to ask a female spelling bee winner for a date...
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KAuss
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #15 on: Nov 25th, 2002, 10:29pm » |
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hmm to me this all makes no sense, since in order to do an experiment to test what is stated "foot size leads to different results in spelling bee" then the test subjects should have same attributes as close as possible to a logical standpoint and with only noticeable difference in foot size inorder for this to work.
If you place a man with size 12 foot vs a kid with a size 3 foot obviously through life's experience and AGE will the man have a better chance, unless he is brain dead. Then the factor will NOT be foot size, but rather age.
If you placed 2 kids of the same age, same mental preperations, with significant shoe size difference, say 13 year olds, early bloomer vs late bloomer, and if you tell me that one has more of an advantage over the other because of foot size, please explain...
I know this was a riddle and probably meant to be funny, but heck I can't remember the last time my foot helped me spelled anything dictionary.com didn't 
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Icarus
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #16 on: Nov 26th, 2002, 4:44pm » |
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KAuss: The puzzle does not say that larger foot size leads to better spelling ability. It makes the much weaker assertion that there is a positive corollation between the two. What this latter means is that if you plot foot size against spelling ability for a sufficiently large randomly chosen set of people, the spelling scores tend to be higher as you move towards larger foot sizes on the graph. There is no mention of controlled populations where foot size and spelling score are the only things varying!
The point of this riddle is not to be funny, but to draw attention to the error of reading too much into the information you are given.
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KAuss
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #17 on: Nov 27th, 2002, 7:13pm » |
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LOL, I reallly did get the piont, but it makes no logical sense like a lot of the other puzzles on the site thats all... I mean yeah I get it, but it just wasn't too logical...
This is what you say..
"The puzzle does not say that larger foot size leads to better spelling ability."
And this is what I thoguth from the get go..
"What this latter means is that if you plot foot size against spelling ability for a sufficiently large randomly chosen set of people, the spelling scores tend to be higher as you move towards larger foot sizes on the graph. "
Isn't higher spelling scores better spelling ability? In which it does say larger foot size spell better? It dosen't mean everyone with a larger foot than someone would spell better, but a good % of the time they will, but again like I said, to prove this theory, you can't pit an infant, vs someone who is edjucated and say it's foot size that lead to the better spelling... I just got mad logical issues with the puzzle LOL...
But all in all, I do get it, it's just not one of the better puzzles on this wonderful site..
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| « Last Edit: Nov 27th, 2002, 7:15pm by KAuss » |
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Chronos
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #18 on: Dec 1st, 2002, 10:47pm » |
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To clarify, KAuss: What the riddle says is that people with bigger feet tend to spell better. It does not say that they spell better because of their bigger feet. It's meant as an illustration of the fact that correlation does not equal causation, contrary to what you often see argued. Very often, you will hear arguments like (to use a real-world example) "States where more people own guns have lower crime rates, therefore guns prevent crimes". While the conclusion may or may not be correct (I'm not going to get into that argument here), the argument is lousy. This riddle gives a more obvious example of why it's a bad argument, by making the conclusion sound sillier.
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steve
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #19 on: Dec 2nd, 2002, 6:09pm » |
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First thing that came to my head was that they'd be nervous, and always looking at their feet...
Since I know the virtues of writing the answers up my arm I immediately thought the bigger the feet, the more room to write on... :p
Or not. Entertaining non the less
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jon_G
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #20 on: Dec 3rd, 2002, 6:48pm » |
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Big Johnson=A on spelling bee. Then that isnt true, I lost my 6th grade spelling bee to a little nerd. My first guess was that only older people had larger feet and more knowledge on vocabulary.
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tymalynj
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #21 on: Dec 9th, 2002, 6:00pm » |
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well, simply put, larger feet generally belong to older people. Older people generally have acquired larger vocabularies. These generalizations are certainly adequate to account for the positive correlation.
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James Fingas
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #22 on: Dec 10th, 2002, 9:35am » |
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I would like to point out the following problem with the "bigger feet, older person" solution. Although I am 100% sure that this is the intended answer, I must point out that older people and younger people do not enter the same spelling bees. That is to say, the older people enter more difficult spelling bees. Therefore their performance in spelling bees is no better than the the performance of the younger ones.
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ThatDogLooksTasty
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #23 on: Jan 29th, 2003, 9:43pm » |
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Simple.
Big-feeted kids get teased in the schoolyard and they can't play any sports because of their clumsy feet so they stay home and read dictionaries all day.
If anyone disagrees with me ... then they don't believe my answer is correct.
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David Ryan
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Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
« Reply #24 on: Mar 6th, 2003, 7:02pm » |
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As devil's advocate, i liked, and also thought of, the write more words on larger feet idea. Also, people have to stand to spell in most bees, perhaps after extended periods of standing, a person with larger feet is more comfortable, and more able to concentrate on the words rather than, 'ow, my feet are killing me.' I dont know if that matters, but something to think about other than age....
--Looking back, I'd have rather been a poet, or a farmer.
--Sean Connery, "The Rock"
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