Talk:Age of the captain
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correct answer
[edit]"Unsolvable" (or "not enough info" as some sources say) is NOT a correct answer. In fact, it is an answer, but not a solution. I am bewildered people do not realize that in real life we encounter this kind of underdetermined problems all the time... Long story short, a correct answer is "in the range between 0 and 150 years". Hint: fuzzy mathematics. - Altenmann >talk 04:36, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
Exploring the reasoning behind the answers
Well one can say that any answer is a good answer. The beauty of this question lies not so much in the response given, but rather in the reasoning behind how the response was obtained. Consider each of these:
1. There is insufficient data in the question to arrive at an answer. This response is from a purely LOGICAL perspective; and given such a line of elemental logical reasoning is arguably a good response. It is also the answer that those who created the test want I believe. Good but rather boring.
2. One of the following: Valentine's Day; 462 foot pounds per square inch; [any non-sensical answer particularly one using different measures from the question]. The reasoning here is that since the question is NON-SENSICAL, the answer should also be just as NON-SENSICAL. Thus any non-sequitur will do.
3. At least 28. This was an answer given by someone who did more research on related factors to the question. The attempt was made to add additional info to the problem in hopes of reaching a reasonable solution. Thus in China one must be at least 23 to get a boat license, and to Captain a boat conveying more that 5600 pounds of cargo requires one to have been a captain for at least five years, and using the average weight of goats and sheep the weight of cargo was approximately 8000 pounds, it is deducible that the caption must be at least 28 years old. Kudos, this one was considered by most to be the best answer.
4. The Captain is 58; as in (X) where we substitute for X a known fact. If we assume that the question is in fact not a silly question, and that indeed the student can answer the question with a real age, and that deducing the answer can be done in a fair manner such that access to a large and sophisticated knowledge repository is not needed and thus the student can answer the question using only knowledge the student already possesses, then we arrive at the inescapable conclusion that "I am the Captain" since the only person's age I can be 100% certain of knowing is correct is my own. Therefore, I can say with total certainty that the captain is 58.
5. 36. This answer is arrived at by simply adding 26+10 (26 goats and 10 sheep). The commentary that follows this answer (which is considered to be the only WRONG answer) centers on the fact that the answer is also the most popular answer. This sparks considerable debate as to why, and the suggestion that education has done society a disfavor by not teaching critical thinking skills. Even among adults this a popular answer.
5b. I would point out that if we later learn that the captain of the boat suffers from an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; he/she is an Arithmetically-Dysmorphic-Narcissist, and has an absolute need to find mathematical symmetry between the world and self; those of us who said #5 was the only wrong answer would be looking pretty silly. 26+10 would be a VERY GOOD answer.