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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday April 16 2015, @01:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-seemed-like-the-logical-thing-to-do-at-the-time dept.

A couple of months ago, it was a color-changing dress that blew out the neural circuits of the Internet. Now Kenneth Chang reports in the NYT that a problem from a math olympiad test for math-savvy high school-age students in Singapore is making the rounds on the internet that has perplexed puzzle problem solvers as they grapple with the simple question: "So when is Cheryl's birthday?"

Albert and Bernard just met Cheryl. “When’s your birthday?” Albert asked Cheryl.
Cheryl thought a second and said, “I’m not going to tell you, but I’ll give you some clues.” She wrote down a list of 10 dates:
May 15 — May 16 — May 19
June 17 — June 18
July 14 — July 16
August 14 — August 15 — August 17
“My birthday is one of these,” she said.
Then Cheryl whispered in Albert’s ear the month — and only the month — of her birthday. To Bernard, she whispered the day, and only the day.
“Can you figure it out now?” she asked Albert.
Albert: I don’t know when your birthday is, but I know Bernard doesn’t know, either.
Bernard: I didn’t know originally, but now I do.
Albert: Well, now I know, too!
When is Cheryl’s birthday?

Logical puzzles like this are common in Singapore. The Singapore math curriculum, which has a strong focus on logic-based problem solving, has been so successful that it's been adopted around the world. According to Terrance F. Ross, US students have made strides in math proficiency in recent years, but they still lag behind many of their peers internationally, falling at the middle of the pack in global rankings. In the same PISA report the U.S. placed 35th out of 64 countries in math. "And even though the "Cheryl's Birthday" question may be atypical of the average Singaporean classroom, perhaps it's still worth asking: Are you smarter than a (Singaporean) 10th-grader?"

 
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  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Friday April 17 2015, @12:17AM

    by tftp (806) on Friday April 17 2015, @12:17AM (#171796) Homepage

    I'm saying that most communication is poor, and you try to make at least the essential communication - that can make or break your business - as clear and obvious as possible. It may well be that you will be listening to your contract being read aloud, in court. You want to make sure that you made all the effort that you could to deliver your message, and that it's not your fault that the other guy still managed to misinterpret it.

    Obviously, if the contract contains confusing messages that need to be read by three lawyers and five mathematicians from Singapore, this won't fly real well in court even if they are mathematically correct, like this riddle. Can you imagine that the girl would be giving answers like that to two police officers? Or that they will even attempt to figure out the answer?