Comments on: Mind Teaser: Consider Linda

By: Cassady

Cassady — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:15:26 +0000

I think what is more interesting is that people thought “Linda” ambitious enough to be both a full time banker and feminist. I love it!

By: PJ

PJ — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:31:07 +0000

The answers very simple, it’s not that you’re “dumb”, it’s that people flip through sites like this one because theyre not worth thinking about. The internet is for entertainment, not for showing others the “ha ha boohoo” of how you fell for their little twist.

If the options were reverse (A. Linda is a feminist, and B. Linda is a feminist AND a banker) then most people would have chosen A. I guarantee it

By: Flo

Flo — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:57:19 +0000

The answer is (a). Linda is a bank teller “today”. She was an activist when she was a student. Do I know if she is still an activist today? Nope.

By: Alvaro

Alvaro — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:49:37 +0000

dwindle, not a very accurate analogy…

Do you think he’d more likely be a truck driver, or a truck driver who listens to Mozart all the time while mentally composing haikus?

or,

Do you think he’d be more likely to be an Ivy League professor, or an Ivy League professor who attends classical music performances every week?

By: dwindle

dwindle — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:34:40 +0000

I remember one about a small older man who likes poetry and classical piano. Ivy League professor or truck driver? Well, obviously a truck driver, because they outnumber Ivy League professor several times over.

By: Richard McLaughlin

Richard McLaughlin — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:46:27 +0000

I thought different from others, why would a bank teller and be active in the feminist movement. Does one exclude the other.

David Osborne probably described it best for me.

By: Andy Manjuck

Andy Manjuck — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:02:46 +0000

Perhaps people taking the survey associated the idea of feminism with being quizzed on being a “progressive” thinker and caught onto it like a buzz word. No longer does it become a question of AND/OR logic… no it just becomes a culture quite aware of how often it’s testing its ever-changing view on the ethical nature of the world.

By: Alvaro

Alvaro — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:54:46 +0000

Paul, itÂ´s not me disagreeing with you, it is mathematics/ probability 101. As discussed above, we may be misled by language and our automatic assumptions, but that is precisely why this little teaser is eye-opening.

Once we are told that she is a banker, the probability of her being a banker: 100%

Probability she is, adittionally, active in the feminist movement: you pick. Perhaps 10%? 80%? in any case, it will be less than 100%, otherwise you are assuming it is impossible that she may have chosen not to be active in the feminist movement.

By: Paul Dundon

Paul Dundon — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:28:38 +0000

The claim that Linda is more likely to be a banker than a banker and a feminist is just unsubstantiated. Prima facie, an individual is more likely to be a member of a larger group than a smaller one, but that isn’t the judgement we are being asked to make. We’re given quite a lot of information about Linda’s political views and asked to decide whether she is an active feminist.

It’s more likely, prima facie, that I’m American than it is that I’m British, because there are more Americans than there are British. But if I say I live in the UK, think the Queen is great and call French Fries “chips” you would be foolish to say it wasn’t more likely I was British, despite the prior likelihood. In the same way, the fact that there are fewer feminist bankers than bankers is simply not the issue in Linda’s case.

By: Non

Non — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:26:00 +0000

Devin: You think people assumed the options were: “bank teller and NOT IN the feminist movement” OR “bank teller and IN the feminist movement”.

So people choose the second because OBVIOUSLY, the majority of the bank tellers of the world are feminists?

This is your argument to say that people are not stupid, it was just confusing language?