• Anas@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    C; the question has two identical answers, it gets removed from the test based on that error

  • MathiasTCK@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    C, if their is a requirement to show your work and random guesses that don’t show work get no credit.

  • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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    11 hours ago

    I would answer C) 0% - Ultimately I feel this isn’t a “pick the correct answer” type of test and more of a “pick the best answer” type of test.

    My reasoning is there are really two questions - one is being answered at random, the other I am answering. The one being answered at random is making any answer it chooses wrong - If it picks A or D (25%), then the correct answer is B (50%). If it picks B (50%), then the answer is either A or D (25%). If it chooses C (0%) then the correct answer is A or D (25%) again. No matter which one is chosen at random, it becomes wrong as soon as it is chosen. So then back to the question on the test that I am answering, the correct answer is C) 0%.

    Also, if the teacher marks that wrong, then I am even more correct.

    • dogdeanafternoon@lemmy.ca
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      11 hours ago

      It’s definitely B ) 50%. Ignoring the values for answers, there can only be 1 “correct” answer. If you have 4 options and 1 can be correct, a random guess is 25%. Since there are 2 options for 25%, you have a 50% chance of guessing the correct 25%.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      You can’t separate the question like that. Whichever answer you circle indicates your assertion that this is the probability of getting the correct answer by uniform random chance.

      This means that any answer your circle is wrong, and so the correct answer is to not circle any of them. You could even write e) none of the above to indicate that you have deliberately chosen not to circle one of them instead of skipping the question.

      I have had plenty of exams with multiple choice questions that included the possibility of no correct answers, one correct answer, or even multiple correct answers, and we were expected to make that judgement (rather than blindly follow instructions).

  • Mikina@programming.dev
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    23 hours ago

    Couldn’t you argue that 0% is correct?

    It’s a paradox, no of the answers can be correct, so the chance that you pick the correct one is 0%.

    Sure, by picking it, it makes it wrong, but you don’t care about that.

    If you ran a infite monte carlo test on it, you’d end up with 0% correct answers.

    Sure, picking the zero makes it not true again, but you don’t care about that - it prooves that the statistical test holds.

    • Brave Little Hitachi Wand@feddit.uk
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      17 hours ago

      The trick is that there is no paradox, only the implication of one. ‘If’ being the key word - you’re not actually being asked to answer randomly, but you are being subtly trolled.

      • prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        You do not need to pick at all for the paradox to exist. If either A or D is correct, the other is also correct, and the random odds of selecting the correct answer should have been 50%. This is a contradiction. Neither A nor D can be the correct answer.

        If B is correct, the random odds of selecting it is only 25% - a contradiction, so B cannot be correct. Likewise, if C is correct, there is a 25% chance of randomly picking C. C is also not correct.

        None of the four answers is correct, so there is a 0% chance of randomly picking the correct answer. C is correct, contradiction, C is not correct, C is correct, is not, is too, etc.

        The paradox is resolved by knowing the the scantron answer key has A selected. D is not sufficiently identical to A in javascript, so only the students that randomly guessed the correct answer will get credit.

        Because the paradox can only be resolved with either A or D as the selected answer, well informed students picking randomly would have a 50% success rate.

    • AirBreather@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Nah it’s a paradox. There’s no such thing as just a freestanding Monte Carlo test that you can just “run” - you do actually need to define enough parameters to make it tell you anything.

      This kind of self-referential stuff feels like a proof of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems with extra steps.

    • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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      15 hours ago

      If you ignore self-referential nature of the question and stop the iteration at some point, sure, you can argue that any answer is correct.

      If you ran a infite monte carlo test on it, you’d end up with 0% correct answers.

      That would mean your Monte Carlo test is set up incorrectly because at least 1/4 of the results of the test would be the “correct” answer as per your own argument, thus invalidating it.

  • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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    15 hours ago

    Here’s a more fun one:

    If you pick an answer to this question at random, what is the chance that you will be correct? Mark at least one of the applicable options.

    (a) 20%

    (b) 6.25%

    (c) 0%

    (d) 20%

    And as another puzzle, what happens if you swap “at least one of the” for “all”?

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          4 hours ago

          The answer “there is no correct answer” is correct, but the answer isn’t 0%. It’s a paradox. There isn’t a solution, which isn’t the same thing as saying there’s a 0% chance of getting the right solution (when that is one of the choices).

          • Natanael@infosec.pub
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            1 hour ago

            Essentially there’s a difference between “0% of answers will be correct (because none can be)” and “the listed 0%-option self-invalidates if selected”. The problem is the interaction between answers that shouldn’t be there in normal tests, which changes the values after selection.

            Therefore, the only winning move is not to play.

  • bstix@feddit.dk
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    19 hours ago

    The correct answer is to leave all the options unmarked.

    If you do pick an answer, then you didn’t do it randomly. When not marking the answers, the if-statement has the result of “false”, but that’s not the question.

    If your teacher then asks why you didn’t answer it, you can safely and unparadoxically claim that inaction is also an option.

    • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours ago

      The question is not asking you to pick at random. It’s asking you to suppose that you do pick at random and to mark the correct answer not at random.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        29 minutes ago

        Technically they’re not even asking me to answer the statement.

        It only states that if I pick an answer then something. And I just don’t.

        The idea that you must mark an answer is only implied by it being a standard test.

        This might seem silly, but it happens in real life too. For instance:

        Please choose the correct answer to the question: Is Mitch McConnell dead or alive? Yes or no.

        The republicans have chosen not to answer that test. Can we blame them? Yes, but for what, they didn’t do anything? They are avoiding the Schrödinger paradox by choosing inaction. In some other kinds of cases it might be criminal to withhold information through inaction, but it’s always difficult to prove such a case.

        Buddhism also has a lot of these riddles, where the correct action or teaching is to not acknowledge the question.

    • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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      16 hours ago

      If “no answer” is in the set of possible answers, then it is not a correct answer because there’s then a 20% chance of it being picked at random. But usually that’s not the case for tests anyways.

    • naught101@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Severe programmer mentality 😂 I like it, but I doubt it would play out in the real world