From: Colleen Keirn (ckeirn@cfa.harvard.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 18 2002 - 16:08:45 EDT
Next message: David Gray: "Re: [Channel-talkmissinglink] oak trees and such"
>At 3:04 PM -0600 6/11/02, Gale Greenlee wrote:
>> Hello: I wanted to discuss the various methods used to solve
>>the following puzzle. So to start the discussion I will present
>>the puzzle and then discuss the solution with anyone who is
>>interested. Here goes.
>>
>>
>>
>>"Salesmen lie 4/7 of the time. We pick a tree in the forest, at
>>random, and ask the salesmen (three of them) to tell us what kind
>>of a tree it is. All three agree that it is an oak. The
>>probability the tree is an oak is 9/73. What portion of the trees
>>are oaks?"
>>
>>
>>
>Gale
Ok, I am going to take a stab at this. I have no basis, other than a
hunch, to base it on. I have no idea if I am right, by the way, just
coming at this on a Tuesday afternoon.
My process/guess:
The first bits of information are extraneous. The key information is
"The probability the tree is an oak is 9/73." That means for every
73 trees, 9 are oaks. So my guess is 9/73rds of the trees are oaks.
Just a thought. I'm really interested in this question now!
--Colleen
--
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Colleen Keirn
Workshop Coordinator
The Annenberg Channel
c/o Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
60 Garden Street - MS 82
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
Phone: 617-496-7686 / 800-228-8030 x1
Fax: 617-496-7670
Email: ckeirn@cfa.harvard.edu / channel@learner.org
URL: http://www.learner.org
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