Tag Archive for 'question'

Quora Topics Need Time Expiration

Published on May 9, 2011 in Tech. 0 Comments

People ask a lot of questions which make sense only with some time reference. For example, there’s this question -

Will Chelsea win the Premiere League in the 2010/11 season?

The question was asked in February 2011 when Chelsea and Manchester United were to play each other twice. It made sense to discuss that topic then. Fast forward to the current date – 8th of May 2011 with both the games over. We are left with only 2 games and Manchester United have a lead of 6 points. The same question has lost its sense now. A couple of weeks later, the question would be simply pointless.

Quora should allow users to set an expiration time for a question. After the expiry date, people will not be allowed to comment on the question or post a new answer. However one can always view the question and refer it later.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Switch Off Your Mathematical Brain

Published on February 5, 2009 in Problems. 0 Comments

I came across a wonderful puzzle. It presents a sequence of equalities and requires you to deduce the answer to an incomplete equality. Here’s the set of equalities :

8809 = 6
7111 = 0
2172 = 0
6666 = 4
1111 = 0
3213 = 0
7662 = 2
9312 = 1
0000 = 4
2222 = 0
3333 = 0
5555 = 0
8193 = 3
8096 = 5
7777 = 0
9999 = 4
7756 = 1
6855 = 3
9881 = 5
5531 = 0

All you have to do is to determine the value of

2851 = ?

Apparently people with good mathematical background are having difficulties solving this problem, whereas people with almost no mathematical abilities can easily figure out the answer !!! I took it as a challenge and found myself incapable of deducing the answer. I forwarded the question to a few friends of mine, and none was able to solve the question (probably thus indicating that we are good mathematicians :P ).

We gave up and decided to peek at the comments to know the solution. And the solution astonished us. Indeed, there was no mathematical logic involved in this quiz ! All that was required was a simple observation skill. Hope you have better luck solving this one than we had.

Here’s the link to the authors page : Finish This Sequence Of Equalities

Popularity: 7% [?]