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Topic: Riddle - Identify three workers. Need some h (Read 1502 times) |
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tonyv17
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Riddle - Identify three workers. Need some h
« on: Sep 10th, 2008, 8:27am » |
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This riddle was presented to us at work. It seems like this is a forum of intelligent people so I will throw this out there. I don't know what difficulty this riddle is so I will start it off in medium...
Jennifer, Tom and Frank work the night shift in a particular laboratory and all file their reports from the same computer log in so it is impossible to tell which person wrote which report. Looking at their reports over time, the auditor noticed that one of the three was a delusional and always thought things were exactly opposite of what they were, one was obsessively precise and accurate and one wrong as often as they were right. But, he didn’t know which was which. So he asked Tom if Jennifer was accurate only half the time and by Tom’s answer he new which of night shift was which.
Q. What was Tom’s answer? And which description fits each of the night shift?
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Grimbal
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Re: Riddle - Identify three workers. Need some h
« Reply #1 on: Sep 10th, 2008, 9:40am » |
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If Tom answers yes, it could be Tom is accurate, Jennifer is half-accurate and Frank is delusional.
But it also could be that Tom is delusional, Jennifer is accurate and Frank is half-accurate.
If Tom answers no, it could be Tom is accurate, Jennifer is delusional and Frank is half-accurate.
Or Tom could be delusional, Jennifer half-accurate and Frank accurate.
So if Tom answers by yes or no, I don't see a solution.
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SMQ
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Re: Riddle - Identify three workers. Need some h
« Reply #2 on: Sep 10th, 2008, 9:51am » |
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But if Tom were delusional, he would "[think] things were exactly opposite of what they were," and so would think you had not just asked him whether Jen was half-accurate, and so wouldn't answer. (So I should clearly not choose the glass in front of you!) 
And if Tom is the unreliable one, no matter what he answers -- "yes", "no", no answer, or even "bork" -- you still wouldn't have learned any information about the other two.
I don't think it can be done in a single question.
--SMQ
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teekyman
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Re: Riddle - Identify three workers. Need some h
« Reply #3 on: Sep 10th, 2008, 1:27pm » |
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What is the "opposite" of half-accurate?
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towr
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Re: Riddle - Identify three workers. Need some h
« Reply #4 on: Sep 10th, 2008, 1:32pm » |
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on Sep 10th, 2008, 1:27pm, 1337b4k4 wrote:| What is the "opposite" of half-accurate? |
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Not-half-accurate, so either of delusional or precise in this case.
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| « Last Edit: Sep 10th, 2008, 1:33pm by towr » |
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Wikipedia, Google, Mathworld, Integer sequence DB
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Grimbal
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Re: Riddle - Identify three workers. Need some h
« Reply #5 on: Sep 10th, 2008, 3:17pm » |
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What if the delusional person believes to be accurate? 
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