Controversial 2nd Grade Test Question

[kgarrett12486]

The real question to me here - why is Autumn going to all these lnegths of making a tally chart just for a bag of silly tiles? She can't keep basic count in her head?

[Tugboat]

On 5/18/2023 at 10:49 AM, Tetsujin said:

There's a difference between "probability" and "likelihood". The former being mathematical odds and the latter based on what has happened in the past.

Not sure why this is in 2nd Grade unless it's some advanced/gifted program.

 

This is fully a hundred percent not a 2nd Grade question.

 

 

 

Asking second graders about probabilities is not a thing.  Most high school graduates still don't even have a basic understanding of that.  But it's good bait and i'm going to respond anyway...

 

On 5/18/2023 at 11:40 AM, MKnight82 said:

So like I said this has blown up online with 3 strong camps.  The first being, oh well the teacher was just trying to state a simple relationship here and the answer should be Yellow.  Then you have the people who are saying, well if you started off with even amounts then there should be more Blue left in the bag so the answer should be Blue. Then you have people saying, well wait a minute we haven't been provided any other information, and you have a problem with only two outcomes.  With no other information the likelyhood of two outcomes happening is 50/50, so the answer should be equal Blue and Yellow. 

The weird thing and why this has spiraled into such a big thing online is somehow people have turned this terrible 2nd graders question into a political issue. I won't get into that here but its pretty silly the world we live in now.

My own personal opinion is that this was just a terribly written question that can be interpreted in so many ways. 

 

This whole thing sounds like someone who doesn't understand game theory as well as they think they do.  But is weirdly overconfident about it anyway.

 

All three of these "camps" are wrong.

 

The interesting thing here, is that it raises the question about how susceptible prior generations are to misinformation.  We all understand that current generations are facing new and different disinformation campaigns that didn't exist back in the day.  But this "controversial fake question" prompt is fundamentally a test of critical thinking skills.

 

On 5/19/2023 at 10:35 AM, Heimdallr said:

This is exactly how the scientific method works. You have a set of (incomplete) information, and need to draw conclusions and predictions based on the given data. Yellow is the only correct answer given the provided data. Assuming there were an even number of tiles in the bag to begin with, or that there is a 50/50 chance of pulling either color are perfect examples of unfounded assumptions and should be wrong answers.

My only problem with the question is that it is too advanced for 2nd graders. More suitable for a middle school science class.

 

There's an interesting probability equation in there, if do you assume there were an equal number of each colour tiles in the bag to begin with.  An equation that more people should probably be familiar with.  But the first issue to tackle...is people having an incomplete set of critical reasoning tools that would allow them to frame this question properly in the first place.

 

On 5/20/2023 at 8:17 PM, TOUCAN said:

All I’m saying is there are known known known unknowns but there are also unknown unknowns! The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence!

 

Ya'll just don't know what you don't know, and it's impossible to say otherwise.

 

On 5/22/2023 at 9:41 AM, PARROTHEAD said:

AI would have produced a question that had an answer.

I think they just had trouble translating it correctly from Mandarin.

 

AI is extremely stupid.  For some reason, it's been engineered to behave like the lowest common denominator.  It gives answers like a moron.  It writes like a plebian.  It's like AI in the vein of ChatGPT have "learned" on the content of your every day ordinary dip****.  They produce similar results.

 

On 6/2/2023 at 7:30 AM, kgarrett12486 said:

The real question to me here - why is Autumn going to all these lnegths of making a tally chart just for a bag of silly tiles? She can't keep basic count in her head?

I just want to see the ******* tally chart tbh.

[JaguarCrazy2832]

This is stupid, without knowing the # of each, how can you know? Unless the idea is well if they are pulling more yellows now that trend will continue with the law of large #s?

[twslhs20]

On 5/18/2023 at 10:43 AM, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Bahahaha of course there are 3 camps and they're all wrong.

I feel the same way about pocket jacks preflop.