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On June 13 2012 13:28 HaNdFisH wrote:
I wonder if there is any correlation with discipline here, would for instance a mathematics or physics major be less prone to these type of errors than an arts/psychology/etc major?
No it probably has more to do with personality. I'm a lazy bastard who graduated with a math degree and I'd make that error because I don't care about the answer and I wouldn't feel like doing the work. 
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Got the first question instantly, got the baseball one wrong.
I feel dumb right now...
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I got both of these questions wrong on first try i will admit it 
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The questions are ridiculously easy other than for people who think they are too smart i.e. they are not
TLDR: L2 Algebra 101 and Logic
/Thread
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rofl .5 cents...
stupid simple...dont know how people would get those logic questiosn wrong.
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The answer is 5 cents.
Any way, I still find this article odd. At first glance, it's almost stating that those who are smarter make more mistakes. I suppose the article picks up on smarter people being more sure of themselves, and thus more likely to make mistakes when rushing, or something... otherwise, you get a loop of higher intelligence = more mistakes... but then how else would you rank intelligence when given a test? ^^
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On June 13 2012 13:54 NekoFlandre wrote:
rofl .5 cents...
stupid simple...dont know how people would get those logic questiosn wrong.
...he says as he gets it wrong
It's 5 cents, not .5 cents 
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On June 13 2012 13:49 HaNdFisH wrote:
Seems the study was done just on Psychology students, would have been interesting to see a cross-discipline one.
Yeah, I would conclude from these results that psychology students are not as smart as they might think they are. Not that smart people have more bias. They're almost saying that engineering/math students (smarter) would have even more questions wrong; something that is easily tested.
(I didn't read the article so I probably don't have all the information about the studies they've done)
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The ball costs 5 cents, took me something like 15 seconds to figure out, first thought was 10 cents ofc.
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So isn't this largely something of a correlation between the old addage: jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none? Typically to master a certain field, people lose practice in other fields.
So though the students in university might really know a lot about law, if the last time they were even asked a maths question was 6 years ago, their ego will get in the way and force them to answer what may appear to be a simple question fast, or without proper thought.
What surprises me the most is that people told of their bias struggle to fix it. Though I can correlate as I do see some people who get to a point in education (I'm a teacher for context) where they are typically more right than wrong, and upon finding that refuse to change. Been butting heads with some more senior educators since I got here as they try to teach AAA game development in a locally independently driven market. They don't even have AAA experience =/ Can't tell them they're wrong either.
I guess that falls into another stereotype of old people being less inclined to change. So though the study is interesting to think about, to be fair we've known of this forever. But as it says: people struggle to change their bias upon identification of said bias.
(For the record: I answered the question wrong because I didn't read it. I missed the "dollar" part. Pretty essential haha)
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Got both of them right..the first one was very obvious, the second one, it's quite easy to get into the "yeah obviously.." mode and get the answer wrong,if my trick question senses were not tingling.
All comes down to just thinking slowly for a bit and understanding the question.
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"Smarter people more pron..." is all the saw on the title. I quickly clicked expecting something stimulating and was instead given a math test. I am disappoint, son.
+ Show Spoiler +My ball(s) is now blue, and my bat has shrunk to less than a cent in worth.
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The problem with your ball question is that as soon as people read your little article they will instantly look at the question you post as if it were a trick question and therefore look for the "trick" in the question.
When I read the ball question, I saw 10 cents instantly, but realized that it was most likely a trick question and therefore thought the question through and came to the correct answer. The truly intelligent people while realize the nature of your so called "test" and therefore answer every question correctly.
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On June 13 2012 13:49 HaNdFisH wrote:Seems the study was done just on Psychology students, would have been interesting to see a cross-discipline one. Show nested quote +
Method
Participants. The participants were 482 undergraduate students
(122 men, 360 women) from a medium-sized, eastern university
recruited through an introductory psychology subject pool.
Not Pyschology students as in Psychology majors, just people who were in the introductory Psych class. I know at my university it was a very very common class to take as a General Education requirement (has a different name at every school) and we were required to participate in 10 experiments as homework. Probably will be a slightly above average number of Psychology majors, but I'd imagine the students had a very broad range of majors overall.
Also I got both the questions correct basically instantaneously, I guess I'm an inbred mouthbreathing imbecile.
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On June 13 2012 14:01 Artemis_ wrote:
The problem with your ball question is that as soon as people read your little article they will instantly look at the question you post as if it were a trick question and therefore look for the "trick" in the question.
When I read the ball question, I saw 10 cents instantly, but realized that it was most likely a trick question and therefore thought the question through and came to the correct answer. The truly intelligent people while realize the nature of your so called "test" and therefore answer every question correctly.
Yeah pretty much. Most people have just read an article on smart people being dumb, so they hit the question with a "Got to prove myself" mindset. If this thread was just the question posted, and people couldn't see the posts of other users, then we might have a wider variety.
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can someone please explain these?
Bat + Ball = $1.10 (ok)
Bat = Ball + $1 (ok)
=> (Ball +1) + Ball = 1.10 (no..... ball + $1 = bat + ball) no where did it say if you buy 2 balls and add a dollar it equals $1.10
Ball + Ball = $.10 (now irrelevant)
2Ball = $.10 (now irrelevant)
Ball = $.05 (now irrelevant)
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On June 13 2012 14:06 SipNanana wrote:
can someone please explain these?
Bat + Ball = $1.10 (ok)
Bat = Ball + $1 (ok)
=> (Ball +1) + Ball = 1.10 (no..... ball + $1 = bat + ball) no where did it say if you buy 2 balls and add a dollar it equals $1.10
Ball + Ball = $.10 (now irrelevant)
2Ball = $.10 (now irrelevant)
Ball = $.05 (now irrelevant)
Ball = X
Bat = X + 1.00
X+ (X + 1.00) = 1.10
2X = .10 (If you do not understand how I got here, then well... idk what to say)
X = .05
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The problem with this OP along with the questions is that right away you are clued in that these questions are attempting to "trick" you. They WANT you to go with the 'easy' answer. In other words in order to succeed, you have to question your immediate gut reaction. So if saying "oh durr a dollar must be the right answer", you realize that it was too easy to come to that conclusion, so you have to think once more. Then simple math comes into play: "Of course, if the bat was one dollar MORE, it can't just be a dollar, because then the ball was free, total cost one dollar -- correct answer must be 5 cents + 1.05 =1.10"
It's a trick for taking standardized tests where you know the difficulty of the answers. On hard questions you are supposed to avoid whatever the seemingly 'easy' answer is, while on easy questions it's often best not to overthink, because the majority is getting it correct. Something like that
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Well, the article is odd and from the way I interpret it, it has more to do with their interpretation of smart.
The article defines smart from their SAT scores which means students who do well in exams. I would say that's how a lot of students are taught to do SATs or exams in general which is to identify tips and tricks that enable the students to answer the questions in the least amount of effort possible so they can get the highest amount of correct answers possible under a limited amount of time.
The wording of the question led students to believe ( from the way they have been trained) to answer 10 cents. Out of 10 question, the student might get it wrong this one time on this particular "trick question" but for the other 9, he will get the answer in the shortest possible time by spending the least amount of effort. That's smart in our exam-based education system. Sure, if you resort to doing it in full algebra every time, you will never make such a mistake. But you are spending "too much" energy and thought and time at each question and you might end up not having enough time to finish the whole exam and you won't get the highest score possible using this method.
If these students are aware that they are being tricked instead of being presented the problem in a usual test environment, there is very little chance they will get it wrong as proven by people reading it from this website expecting trick questions.
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Australia6267 Posts
I'll like to read the study itself - I don't understand how bias can be measured by some arithmetic tests - these tests are designed to "trick" people but if people pause for a couple of seconds, they will get the right answer.
Anyways, I have a deep skepticism of these psychology studies and this has made me even more unimpressed.
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EPT
