Re: nit picker's special

[John Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 06:26 PM 7/10/00 -0500, brian whatcott wrote:

> Now hang on just one darn' minute!
>  *I'm* the one who insisted on using "real-world" assumptions of
> a discrete halt time for a bus at a bus-stop AND provided
> viable answers on that basis, whereas John D (initially)
> wanted the bus to linger at the bus-stop for exactly 0.00 seconds!

That's not what I wanted, and it's not what I said.  See below.

> How you fellows can come on righteous about expecting impossible
> real-world assumptions to be used in puzzles beats me!

That COMPLETELY misses the point about nit-picking.

Hey, everybody, you need to ask yourself:
  do you want to be known as a person who _solves_ problems, or
  do you want to be known as a person who _causes_ problems?

In this case:

1) Any of you could have looked at my original statement of the bus puzzle,
understood the scientific principle that it illustrates, and realized that
it is the interval between the _arrival_ of one bus and the _arrival_ of
the next bus that best illustrates the principle.

That is, you could have recognized that my speaking in terms of the
"departure" of one bus and the arrival of the next bus was a needlessly
muddled statement of the puzzle.  Thereupon you could have restated the
puzzle and answered the improved version.

This behavior is typical of the people I work with.

2) A person with a good attitude but somewhat less insight and initiative
could answer the original version of the puzzle, leaving the dwell time "D"
as a formal parameter.

At no time was anybody asked to assume real busses exhibit D=0.00 or any
other particular value.

Being able to find nits is not the main issue.  The main problem manifests
itself when someone uses nits as an excuse for not solving the puzzle.

Knowing the value of D was not necessary to solve the bus puzzle.  In
particular, the fact that D was unspecified is absolutely no barrier to
answering part 2 and seeing how it contrasts with part 1, which was
explicitly the point of the puzzle.

================

I say again:  We must make it clear to students that in the real world, if
they want to have a good job, the rule is:

  When somebody asks a nit-ridden question, rephrase the question.
  Answer the question that _should_ have been asked.