Friday, August 03, 2007

The Einstein Quiz

I recently came across this Einstein Quiz. Apparently only 2% of the ppl in the world wud be able to answer it. Here's the quiz:
Facts: 1. There are 5 houses in 5 different colors.
2. In each house lives a person with a different nationality.
3. These 5 owners drink a certain beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet.
4. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same drink.
5. Hints:
1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the left of the white house.
5. The green house owner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the house right in the centre drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blend has a neighbour who drinks water.

Can you determine who keeps the fish?

I was like "yeah!! I cud do it. I'll be the 2% that would solve the quiz." So I took out a pen and paper and start drawing diagrams, mapping the clues out, just like a standard physics question going thru a mechanical process. After around 5-10mins, I managed to come to a conclusion. Well I'm not gonna spoil it for ppl who wanna solve the quiz, so if you wanna solve it don't scroll any further.
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Ok this would prolly do. Anyways, I came to the conclusion. I was like hell that was not that difficult. There's prolly a trick to it since Mr. Einstein state that 98% wud not be able to solve it. I mean he's the smart ass guy would flipping came up with E = mc2. So I went through it again and came to the same conclusion. So I prolly did the whole technical and logical process right but not the understanding. Then I look at this Einstein picture.

I was like that's a cheeky little wanker. Prolly the quiz were meant to haf no solution or the solution is some stupid ass answer. So I decided to google the quiz looking for the answer and apparently I found it.
This is quoted from the website I found. It goes:

Almost all the answers to the Einstein Quiz I have seen on the web go through the same mechanical process to solving the puzzle. They chart out the problem, lay out each clue graphically, and slowly build a picture of which persons, drinks and pets are in which houses. Its a logical, technical and involved process. If you do all this you inevitably conclude that it is the German who has fish.

But is this the right way to solve the problem? No its not! Nowhere in the problem, except in the question, is the word fish found. Thus the fifth pet might just as well be elephants as fish. After a lot of work you can safely conclude that the German has the fifth pet, but you have to ASSUME that the fifth pet is fish in order to conclude the German has fish. But you have no basis for making this assumption. Note that Einstein was very careful to separate the "Facts" from the "Question" in this puzzle.

So the correct answer to the Einstein Quiz is: You have no idea if anyone keeps fish or not. Once you grasp the nature of the problem correctly, its rather simple to solve. And it is just like Einstein to give us a puzzle like this, for he stressed examining assumptions, and once wrote: "The important thing is to not stop questioning."

I was like fuck this shit. I just freaking wasted almost 30mins of my time. But then again, I was thinking that I would come up with an answer like that. I mean like saying "Well, this does not mean the german have the fish since it's not stated." But apparently too much Physics can actually subdue my Saggitarrian side (meaning my ego side which thinks that I can come up with a silly answer and yet I can prove that I'm right). So assumption is actually quite a silly and dangerous thing to do well in this case, saying the German have a pet fish but he prolly have a freaking hyena or sumthing. (I just need an excuse to show this pic. I mean is this cool or wad. Hell am I gonna mess wif this dude here.)


Anyways, this was a long post and I can't wait for the new footie season (8 more days). Oh yeah, I can't wait for my architecture course to start as well.

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