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Probability (reddthat.com)
submitted 21 hours ago by DrBanjo@reddthat.com to c/mathmemes
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[-] Jambalaya@lemmy.zip 7 points 21 hours ago
[-] fbs@lemmy.world 34 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

If the answer is B, that means there's a 25% chance of getting the right one. So the answer is A and D. But wait... that's 50%

50% means 25%

That means 50%

So it's 0% because it's impossible.

Meaning it's 25%

Damn it

[-] Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 21 hours ago

Not really but you're thinking in the right direction!

There is no correct answer because the question and the answers exclude themselves:

For four different options it is 25% but here two options are the same - so you have a 50% chance to land on a 25% - but this means that the correct answer is only in one of the four answers, therefore you're having a 25% chance.

It's a nice demonstration of what happens when the answer and question are intervined and any result changes an aspect of the answer - you're fucked, basically.

[-] Marty_TF@lemmy.zip 4 points 21 hours ago

well, you are either right or wrong which is 2 options, and 100%/2 is 50%. or something like that

[-] bizarroland@lemmy.world 7 points 20 hours ago

None of the answers are correct, though, because all of the answers are correct as you work through the problem solving for correctness, but once you have actually analyzed the problem for that answer being the answer to the question, it is no longer correct.

I'll do a boring and pointless breakdown of it here:

Statistically, if there are four answers and one of them is correct and it's picked at random, then you have a 25% chance of being correct.

There are two answers that are 25%. If you land on either one of them, that would be correct.

That means that you have a 50% chance of being correct.

There is only one 50% answer, which means you have a 25% chance of being correct.

But there are two 25% answers which means the correct answer is 50%.

But, since none of the answers are correct, then the correct answer is 0%.

But 0% is one of the answers.

So you have a 25% chance of being correct.

I personally would write in "E: None of the above, 20%."

[-] Azteh@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

Well wouldn't the correct answer for us to mark be 25% then? As we aren't marking it randomly but we are specifically choosing it, therefore you have a 25% random chance to pick 0% which makes us marking a 25% answer correct

[-] bizarroland@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

But if 0% was the correct answer, then there would not be a correct answer on the test.

25% != 0%

[-] Azteh@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

I suppose that depends on how pedantic you want to be, cause based on how I read it, you need to "solve" the real answer, which is “c) 0%“, due to the paradoxical situation and then figure out what the chance of picking that correct answer is, if you were to randomly chose one of the 4 options, so either of the 25% options should be correct to mark as a chosen answer and not chosen randomly.

But yes, 25% is not equal to 0%, however English is a lovely language

[-] Marty_TF@lemmy.zip 2 points 14 hours ago

i was doing a bit, shoulda marked it with an /s

sorry you spent valuable time on my bullshit typing that out lol

this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
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