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I am curious how the people on this list came to the answer - it might help in knowing how we would want our students to come to the answer - i.e., how to think as physicists.
I read BC's approach - I would be thrilled if my non-science majors could think in that fashion. I had a slightly different approach - I never actually thought about the numbers per se. I envisioned a line divided into 27 parts and one divided into 17 parts. I could "see" that 25 parts were closer to the right end of the line than 15 parts - it was all purely visual - no deliberate use of formal logic.
Do we as physicists intuit answers or do we formally apply critical thinking?