There are times, when all the world's asleep ... [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

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(No, I haven't managed to fall asleep again yet. Might as well start my day and hope to get an afternoon nap.)

This is a pretty simple game of "spot the fallacy" (you don't have to know the classical names of the different fallacies, just be able to say, "Bzzzt!" when you spot one).

You Are Incredibly Logical

(You got 100% of the questions right) Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic You think rationally, clearly, and quickly. A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

How Logical Are You?

I think I know how most of my friends will score, but there are a few people whose scores I'll admit to being curious about.

[Edit: There's enough discussion of the problems in the comments that you might want to proceed directly to the test before clicking on the cut-tag if you want to see how you'll do on your own.]

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There are 26 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

#6: the right answer is own one pair of shoes and all of your socks are the same color and type. :)

My SO would have you believe the same thing! LOL

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You Are Pretty Logical

(You got 63% of the questions right)

You're a bit of a wizard when it comes to logic

While you don't have perfect logic, you logic is pretty darn good

Keep at it - you've got a lot of natural talent in this area!

How Logical Are You?

I want to know which ones I got wrong though so I can work them out and this test doesn't let you do that. *sigh*

But by simple (though repetitious) logical elimination, you can figure out which question have the "right" answers.

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To be honest I'm not so interested as to take the same test over and over though.

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Okay, I went back and figured it out and I got 2, 3, and 6 wrong. But the only one I see as actually being wrong is 3 which I rushed through. For #2 given that the first and third answer were both equally true and I didn't want to arbitrarily pick between them, and the second answer could be true I thought that "All of the above" was the safest one.

For #6, even though the third answer was not true, the first and second answer again could be true.

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For #2, the second answer cannot be true by the rules of baseball: there are no "ties". If the game is tied, they go into extra innings until it is no longer tied.

However, the testmakers seem to want you to answer "all of the above". Feh.

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Okay, that would require me to have knowledge of the rules of baseball. Since I'm thoroughly disinterested in sports that one flew right past me.

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Actually, no, all the information required is in the statement of the problem. I'd actually forgotten that there are no ties in baseball, and just reacted to the "Given that if A then B then which statements about A and B follow?" construction. So the question could've been about jai-lai or MTG or ... that game played in lunar gravity with lasers and mirrors that I've forgotten the name of ... or any other sport I don't know, and I would've gotten the same answer.

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Nope, they weren't looking for "all of the above" there. Hint: the question asked, "what else must also be true?"

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I think your problem with #6 might be a misreading more than a logic error.

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Just tracking test problems as I go. While the strictly logical answer #2 is there, the real life solution isn't. There are LOTS of other possibilities available, none of which are considered.

#5: Who says that all the items of the same color are also the same STYLE? (It's implied but not certain.)

#6: "e) Your sample is horribly skewed from the real world." But we already knew that :-)

FWIW, I scored 100%. Which only shows that I understand the testmaker's logic, not the real stuff.

I interpreted #2 and #6 as meaning "which of these must be true", not a claim that either set of answers was exhaustive.

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But the fact is that, in the real world, those are not certainties, as the discussion of alternative possibilities in baseball demonstrates.

Just because a thing is logical doesn't imply it's right, correct, or accurate.

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*nod* It was a test of logic, which is one extremely useful tool in making real-world decisions, not a general test of real-world decisionmaking. I'd say you've pointed out a limit of the problem-domain of the test, not a flaw in the test. (But it is an important limitation, yes.)

And while logic isn't the be-all and end-all of intelligent thought, in general IF the initial data are correct, then the logical conclusions one can draw from those data are usually the right way to bet.

More importantly, logic is really useful for detecting blatant bullshit, rhetoric that attempts to distract or deceive, and a lot of mistakes. So I'm not claiming that Logic Is Everything, only that formal logic is extremely useful.

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100% here. That was fun.

I stopped that test at the second question. Cultural bias: I have no idea how a team wins in baseball, and whether a home run is a do-or-die thing or not, or what.

Probably would have had the same result, if the site didn't keep timeouting on me.

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Ah, but the information needed to answer the question is stated in the question. Rephrase it thus and avoid the distracting sports stuff:

If A, then B. Given that this is true, what else also must be true?

If B, then A.
If not-A, then C.
If not-B, then not-A.
All of the above.

As I mentioned in another comment, I'd forgotten one of the rules of baseball when I took the test, and would have been comfortable answering that question if it had been about a sport I didn't know.

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I did try phrasing it that way, but then I got confused and stopped, realizing I couldn't be sure that there wasn't a hidden conditional in the original phrase ("If A, then B since given D") because I couldn't know the terms translated to stark A and stark B.

Maybe I was thinking too hard.

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Ah, good point about not being sure whether there was an unstated element you were expected to know from real life. Amusingly, if you'd gotten to #8 you would've found one where bringing real-world knowledge into it leads to a wrong answer.

Thinking about it more, it might have made more sense (given that the Web is global) to use a completely (and obviously) made-up game instead of baseball there, so as to avoid that "what don't I know about this that they're assuming I should?" reaction. If it were clear that nobody was expected to have outside knowledge of the sport...

So okay, yeah, cultural bias. I guess I should see whether there's a feedback address for whoever wrote the test.

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Even when you write it that way,

If not-B, then not-A.,

that still sounds to me to be correct.

It was phrased as a conditional, If she gets the home run then the team wins so if the team didn't win then logically she didn't get the home run. That makes the same sense as the question of the chick that didn't go to the movie unless she could drive. The two answers that were logically correct were that a)if she went to the movies she drove, and b) if she didn't drive she didn't go to the movies. That has the same if not-B, then not-A as the baseball question.

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"If not-B, then not-A" is correct. Where it differs from the driving/movies question is the first answer, "If B, then A," which is not correct. (One question has an "only if", the other merely "if". So it's possible that the next batter hit a home run, for example, or that she hit a double and the next batter hit a triple, or the other team was caught cheating and had to forfeit, or something.)

Of course, the real fun is applying this analysis to political speeches. If one's blood pressure can stand it.

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Damn! This is why I never was any good at word problems in Math! LOL

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I got one hunnerd, but was slow doing so. Not sure if it was because I was paranoid about trick questions or just because I'm getting old and slow. :P

75 %, in a hurry

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