Easy questions people get wrong

[fluorescenthippo]

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I asked a girl how many feet are in a yard, and she said "36?".

It was a very weird answer, because there are 36 inches in a yard.

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doesnt seem that weird. clearly she was thinking of inches not feet. i guess its sorta stupid, but not shockingly weird or anything.

[DoGGz]

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What are some questions that seem easy, but people seem to get wrong?

I have one that i have asked over 20 college students and none of them have gotten it right, If you are running a race that you have not been lapped in, and you pass the person in 2nd place, what place are you in? The only person that got this right is my mother lol

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I bet you 20 other people got it right, but that you were just too retarded to know. If you are in first place, and you pass the 2nd place person, it means you've lapped them. The question says only that you have not lapped the others, not that you don't have a huge lead.

btw, please edit your subject to the above.

[jaffa]

Capital of Australia?

[DoGGz]

And what are with these questions about the past predicting the future?

If a mother has a girl, then she has another kid, it's the same chance that that first one was a girl. Not exactly 50/50, because all women are different.

If you spin a roulette wheel and land on black, the next spin is %50 to land on black.

If I flip a coin and land on heads 10 straight times, I'm 50% to get heads on the next flip.

[DoGGz]

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smaller.

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think about a sheet of metal, with no hole. as you heat it up, the edges expand in all directions. if you were to draw a circle in the middle of the sheet, as you heated the metal up, the circle would expand.

now think of the circle as a hole.

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is bigger the correct answer? because that's really non-intuitive.

okay, i have another good one. APPARENTLY anyone who's taken a statistics class (not me) knows the answer to this though.

The dealer pulls three aces out of a deck of cards, one of which is the ace of spades. She offers you one of the cards, and you take one. Then she flips one of her cards face up, and it's not the ace of spades. Your objective is to choose which face-down card is the ace of spades, yours or hers.

should you choose your card, her card, or does it not matter?

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How are people saying it doesn't matter? Read the question. It's a classic Monty Hall problem.

You say it doesn't say that she knows which card is the spade? It doesn't matter.

"Then she flips one of her cards face up, and it's not the ace of spades."

See, she flips her card and it's not the spade. So you pick a random card, if you picked a non-spade, then her card is the spade. If you picked the spade, then her card is a non-spade. You are much more likely to pick a non-spade first.

Jesus people.

[wtfsvi]

Are you serious? Both those things have been explained pretty well in this thread. You are wrong.

As for the north pole question, there will not only be an infinite number of points near the south pole where you can do this, but near an infitinite number of "circles" between that first circle and the south pole, where you can do this. I don't think it's possible to do it close to the north pole though, like someone suggested. Because the circle where you can go 100 miles east and end up in the same spot is probably closer than 100 miles from the north pole, and thus you can't get there by going 100 miles south from anywhere.

[gusmahler]

This thread sucks. Most of these aren't "easy" questions, they are trick questions or probability questions. It's no wonder that people get them wrong.

What amazes me are those surveys that say X% of Americans can't name the capital of the US.

[jedi]

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we were born on the same day of the same year, says matt, and we have the same mother and the same father, says david, but we are not twins. can you explain?

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both born on sunday, mon, tues, etc?

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Maybe they're triplets (or more)