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by nickpsecurity
851 days ago
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That’s exactly what I did. In FreeBASIC. The way the problem works started coming together in my head as I coded it. The code’s structure reflected the problem’s structure. I realized I previously misunderstood something about the problem statement. Later, I read someone saying many mathematicians got this problem wrong because of how it’s worded. So, it may be challenging, not because probability was challenging, but because it was unclearly specified. That’s the cause of many software errors, too. |
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People who get it wrong are usually projecting some implied understanding onto it, which is why they get it wrong.
Which is the point of the problem. It's designed to reveal this tendency in analytical thinking leading to unexpected outcomes. You get it wrong, you're gobsmacked, you understand why, you gain some enlightenment from it. It's fun to be wrong in ways you later understand. (This is one of the thrills of programming: that moment during debugging when you shriek with joy: "YES, IT BROKE!")
The fact that it also exposes the way some overly confident people lash out with anger that exposes other biases is the point of the article, I think.