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        riddles >> easy >> Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
        
(Message started by: Mixster on Jul 25th, 2002, 2:41am)
Title: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Mixster on Jul 25th, 2002, 2:41am
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
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by a girl on Jul 25th, 2002, 7:18pm
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.  ;)
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Adam Hanig on Jul 27th, 2002, 10:03am
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.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by william wu on Jul 27th, 2002, 1:56pm

on 07/27/02 at 10:03:17, 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.


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.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by cnmne on Jul 30th, 2002, 1:40pm
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.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Brion on Jul 30th, 2002, 2:43pm
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
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Ion Rush on Jul 31st, 2002, 9:43pm
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
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by MattyDK23 on Aug 13th, 2002, 8:21pm
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... ;)
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Mongolian_Beef on Aug 13th, 2002, 8:33pm
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.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by rfeague on Sep 7th, 2002, 12:40pm
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.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Seth M on Sep 19th, 2002, 2:22pm
My take is this:

Bigger the feet, better the understanding.

But that's sort of off the wall for an actual logic puzzle.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by thelonious on Oct 22nd, 2002, 8:21pm
It's all about thinking on your feet.
Or at least, how comfortable you are doing this for long periods.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Brian Lee on Nov 7th, 2002, 12:55am
How about, the larger the feet, the longer the male sex organ, thus the higher level of confidence?
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Amelia on Nov 15th, 2002, 1:18pm
HOw about this.  The study was only conducted on childern in from grade 1-6.   ;)  Why should we assume this includes all people.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by TimMann on Nov 15th, 2002, 7:15pm
If Brian Lee is right, remind me never to ask a female spelling bee winner for a date... ;)
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by KAuss on Nov 25th, 2002, 10:29pm
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 :)
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Icarus on Nov 26th, 2002, 4:44pm
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.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by KAuss on Nov 27th, 2002, 7:13pm
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..
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Chronos on Dec 1st, 2002, 10:47pm
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.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by steve on Dec 2nd, 2002, 6:09pm
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
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by jon_G on Dec 3rd, 2002, 6:48pm
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. ;)
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by tymalynj on Dec 9th, 2002, 6:00pm
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.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by James Fingas on Dec 10th, 2002, 9:35am
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.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by ThatDogLooksTasty on Jan 29th, 2003, 9:43pm
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.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by David Ryan on Mar 6th, 2003, 7:02pm
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"
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by richard w on Mar 24th, 2003, 3:02am
Surely the kids with the big feet are the retarded ones that are kept back a couple of years and for whom spelling just isn't all that easy?
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by MattyDK23 on May 11th, 2003, 2:25am
I finally returned to this site...going through my bookmarks.

Just to clarify what I was saying:

1. In general, foot size is a (rough) indicator of age.
2. In general, older people have better spelling abilities.

Throw out all this garbage about linear relationships, correlations, etc...the hint said to keep it simple!

Where the confusion comes in, I believe, is here:


Quote:
...performance in spelling bees / spelling tests.


  • A spelling bee is a tournament against other people; in most cases, against people of the same age.  At the end, only one person remains.  Your performance is usually judged by how you performed in relation to your competitors; say, in what round of the tournament you were eliminated.
  • A spelling test is an exam taken by oneself.  Your performance usually does not rely on the performance of your peers.  Your score may be, for example, the percentage of words your spelled correctly.

So:
Assume there is a positive correlation between foot size and age: a one's feet grows, the older one becomes; and vice versa.

Assume there is a positive correlation between age and spelling ability: The older one grows, the better their spelling ability becomes; and vice versa.

Note that, from these and some basic logic, we can conclude a third positive correlation: between foot size and spelling ability.

(Note: I'm horrible with these definitions of correlations...but you should know what I mean just by the phrase 'positive correlation': the same as in the riddle.  I wrote the first two in order to come to the conclusion of the third)

Therefore:
In the same spelling test, a person's performance will usually be the same or better as they grow older -- therefore, by the correlations, their performance will usually be the same or better as their feet grow.  This affirms one part of the riddle -- no argument here.

But as for the spelling bee?  As you age (and your feet grow), your peers age as well (barring any time dilation...).  But by the age-spelling-ability correlation, everybody's spelling ability -- yours and your peers' -- has increased.  Some more than others, but regardless, it is still a tournament setting.  Little has changed: everyone's spelling ability is (roughly) relatively the same.  So how can one positively state that your performance in spelling bees over time will increase?

You can't.  And therein lies the problem.  Where the wording of the question lies the answer in so many of the riddles...in this one, it is it's bane.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Heya on Nov 28th, 2004, 3:28am
Nope. Can't say I liked this one, after all the horror of doing quantitative analysis and my own (ahem) <em>scientific</em> study in my I.T. honours year. But it certainly shows how statistics can be misused, and therefore is a valuable example. I may in fact use this example to illustrate the point next time I am discussing statistical error.
I think there were some valid criticisms of the riddle, eg that spelling bees are usually related to age group and that older people get harder words and so their performance should not really be correlated with age. But then the headline of the riddle uses the term spelling "ability". In that case there would obviously be the correlation, and the riddle itself makes no statement about what use the researchers made of this fact.
Title: Re: Easy: Foot Size Implies Spelling Ability
Post by Brad711 on Dec 17th, 2004, 8:37pm
You don't have to be so complecated.  Foot Size=Age.  Age=Spelling ability.(Unless your me and then 1-Age= Spelling Ability)


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