![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This morning, Tani's initial classroom work was a very simple logic puzzle from the BrainTeasers(R) series. There were four animals and four names. Given a short list of statements ("Beauty is friends with both Rover and the dog") the student was supposed to be able to figure out which name went with which animal.
I watched Tani work the puzzle, helping him a little bit when he got stuck, and then we both got stuck --- because in order to solve the puzzle, you had to assume that cats and dogs were smaller than goats and horses. Which, in general, they are, but it wasn't stated as a fact on the page.
From Tani's perspective, it wasn't a fact on his list of facts, and so he didn't have a process for acting on that datum. His strategy was to take each of the numbered statements in turn, figure out what new information it gave him, mark it down on the chart, and iterate until everything was determined. This is the correct strategy, and certainly it's what the exercise should be rewarding. They shouldn't be teaching the kids to use their intuition when solving logic problems.
From my perspective as a somewhat experienced puzzler, I wasn't willing to make that assumption because it might be a trick -- perhaps the horse is a miniature foal, and the dog is a sheepdog. Admittedly, the flavortext did refer to it as a "small dog", but I don't trust that. And, also, as I said above, I assumed that the students were being taught to apply logical reasoning to a set of facts, and I wasn't about to advise my son to add on to the facts with his own suppositions.
We checked with the teacher and she said, yes, you can take as a given that the dog is smaller than the horse. So we were able to complete the problem.
But it was broken!
I watched Tani work the puzzle, helping him a little bit when he got stuck, and then we both got stuck --- because in order to solve the puzzle, you had to assume that cats and dogs were smaller than goats and horses. Which, in general, they are, but it wasn't stated as a fact on the page.
From Tani's perspective, it wasn't a fact on his list of facts, and so he didn't have a process for acting on that datum. His strategy was to take each of the numbered statements in turn, figure out what new information it gave him, mark it down on the chart, and iterate until everything was determined. This is the correct strategy, and certainly it's what the exercise should be rewarding. They shouldn't be teaching the kids to use their intuition when solving logic problems.
From my perspective as a somewhat experienced puzzler, I wasn't willing to make that assumption because it might be a trick -- perhaps the horse is a miniature foal, and the dog is a sheepdog. Admittedly, the flavortext did refer to it as a "small dog", but I don't trust that. And, also, as I said above, I assumed that the students were being taught to apply logical reasoning to a set of facts, and I wasn't about to advise my son to add on to the facts with his own suppositions.
We checked with the teacher and she said, yes, you can take as a given that the dog is smaller than the horse. So we were able to complete the problem.
But it was broken!