The Wason Selection Task, Part I
The Pope, a nun, Kermit the Frog, and Bruce Lee are all sitting at a bar. Well, actually it's just four people, represented by the cards below.
Each person has an age and a drink type, but you can see only one of these for each person. Here is a rule: "every person that has an alcoholic drink is of legal age (21)." Your task is to select all those people, but only those people, that you would have to check in order to discover whether or not the rule has been violated.
Most people have little trouble picking the correct answer above. But, "across a wide range of published literature only around 10% of the general population" finds the correct answer to the infamous Wason selection task shown below:
All of this leads to some interesting ideas, which I'll get to in a future post.
Reference: Inglis, M. & Simpson, A. Mathematicians and the Selection Task. Proceedings of the 28th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2004. (3) 89-96.
Wason Task: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI
Each person has an age and a drink type, but you can see only one of these for each person. Here is a rule: "every person that has an alcoholic drink is of legal age (21)." Your task is to select all those people, but only those people, that you would have to check in order to discover whether or not the rule has been violated.
Most people have little trouble picking the correct answer above. But, "across a wide range of published literature only around 10% of the general population" finds the correct answer to the infamous Wason selection task shown below:
Each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other, but you can see only one of these for each card. Here is a rule: "every card that has a D on one side has a 3 on the other." Your task is to select all those cards, but only those cards, which you would have to turn over in order to discover whether or not the rule has been violated.
All of this leads to some interesting ideas, which I'll get to in a future post.
Reference: Inglis, M. & Simpson, A. Mathematicians and the Selection Task. Proceedings of the 28th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2004. (3) 89-96.
Wason Task: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI
Labels: education, mathematics, research
Comments:
OK... I'm bored... I will take a go.
Problem 1.
Card A "Soda" - leave alone. Not an alcoholic drink, doesn't matter what age is drinking it.
Card B "18" - check, the 18 year old could have an alcoholic drink thus breaking the rule.
Card C "Vodka" - check, the person drinking vodka could be under 21.
Card D "29" - doesn't matter what the 29 year old is drinking.
Problem 2.
Check the "D" and the "7". If the "D" has a number besides 3 it breaks the rule. Check the "7", if the letter is "D" then rule is broken.
If the "K" has a 3 behind it, who cares, nothing in the rule prevents 3 from being paired with other letters. Same logic applies to the "3" card. If it has a "D" it conforms to rule, if it doesn't its irrelevant.
Did I get it right?
You did.
Did you find the second task even slightly more difficult?
Actually, no, but only because I figured out the trick on the first problem. It was easier to think of the rule using drinking because its something I can relate to. Once I "got" that the rule worked only in one direction, it was fairly easy to look for it.
I am guessing that some people would get confused on the 2nd problem and also pick the "3".
p.s. I can see why the 2nd problem would be more difficult if it was presented independently. Relating it to an actual situation made it easier to wrap my mind around.
I didn't check "7."
And that's right after I finished a section on negating and contradicting "p --> q" in logic!
Maybe there is a need for a good logic program out there that isn't all about filling in truth tables and has more applications and puzzles.
It doesn't surprise that mathematicians would miss this. e.g. "Therefore, birds do math."
If you develop a K-8 logic curriculum, let me know.
Myrtle, I think that Zig describes some logic instruction in his online book about Project Follow Through and Direct Instruction.
I have always wanted to take a logic class, but never got around to it.
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