in case it isn't obvious, I'm really annoyed about math education :P

If/when I go back to education I'll probably have to deal with it, but for the time being I'm content not having to deal with calculus.

@MikeQ so while that "oh, duh" moment for some may be an "oh neat" moment for another, the "puzzle" relies on the person who CAN solve it not finding it interesting and the person who CAN'T solve it simply not having learned or not remembering a basic math-solving principle, which (as I understand it) can be simplified as "assume what I want is true and go from there".

(I find it annoying)

Take for example, this classic variation of a joke: An chemist, a physicist, and a mathematician are stranded on an island when a can of food rolls ashore. The chemist and the physicist comes up with many ingenious ways to open the can. Then suddenly the mathematician gets a bright idea: "Assume we have a can opener ..."

@dcfyj the teaching method is important. I hated it in HS and loved it in college

@Forklift And is that bad?

@dcfyj Calculus is actually pretty cool if taught right.

I had zero issues with calc 1, my issues arose with calc 2

but also that was 10 years ago, so I don't remember it super well.

@MikeQ, no but there are infinite variations of "problems that are only interesting if you didn't know how to solve them" that you just aren't going to be able to solve until you know how to solve them. and once you do, it is the same as asking "PUZZLE: What is the noun in this sentence?"

I might actually have issues solving that since I never remember parts of a sentence, except for verbs and some prepositions lol

nouns are things

@dcfyj, it should be closed as "unclear what you're asking" because there are 3 nouns

@Sconibulus Yes, I'm aware of that.

It's a weird issue I have, I know

But also I hate writing so I don't really care :P

@Forklift But that's my whole point. If a puzzle is interesting for the people who don't already know how to solve it, then it should be fair game.

@MikeQ I think that's exactly the overall conflict that I'm sort of in the middle of, which is "just because the solution is interesting to some doesn't mean it's "puzzling" in general

Well, then I'm on the other side of the middle

hehehe, you know I thought you might be :P

If the puzzle is interesting to some, even it it's not a fantastic puzzle, that doesn't mean it should simply be removed

Because all of the people who would have gained something from seeing the puzzle - once you remove the puzzle, they can't learn from it

I thought the point of PSE was to ask and answer puzzles, not to entertain people who are already smart.

believe it or not, there's still debate about that

as I can tell, it is EITHER to entertain smart people or to ask questions about puzzling in order to entertain smart people

I consider myself smart (not like most of the full timers here, but well enough) and I think it's an ok system that rules itself pretty well.

SO as a whole strikes a very delicate balance of rigorous gatekeeping with interesting content. If you let in too much of the low quality stuff, the high quality users will find themselves uninterested

however, if you keep out too much of the "mundane" stuff, there will be nothing with which to engage the masses. somewhere in the middle lies the balance of active users and site longevity.

Sure, but interesting for whom?

well, that part doesn't matter.

@Forklift about what the point of the site is?

hehe yeah :)

I don't think there's just one point of it.

see my next sentence :)

there was actually a question about this in the 2016 election q&a

@Deusovi In which case I would like to point out bullet #4

what about it?

Well... not everyone is smart

That's true.

I don't see how that's relevant though.

And the approach of "I know how to solve this easily, therefore it is easy and bad" is unfair to those who are not already knowledgeable

The issue is that the puzzle uses standard methods, not that it's easy.

Okay, I'll take your word for it then.

I'm not articulating myself properly

@MikeQ, let me find a blog entry by one of the founders of SO. it may take me a bit. basically it explains the principle of retaining the "experts" and maintaining the value of content. it's an interesting read.

@Forklift I'm not sure that's applicable here, though.

Puzzling is an outlier.

it is. if every question was simply routine and there was no gatekeeping, the expert luzzlers would find something else to do, effectively neutering PSE

Maybe what I'm trying to say is that, in the future, the approach of "Answered by the experts, for the non-experts" is more fair than "Answered by the experts, for the experts"

A certain amount of moderation is necessary, unfortunately. (Otherwise, you basically end up with Reddit's /r/puzzles, which is... well, to be honest, complete crap.)

Well sure. There are some objectively bad questions - e.g., "I am thinking of something blue, what is it"

But the PSE inner circle of regulars seems to have accepted biases for and against certain puzzle types, and I'm hoping that the mods are aware of that

I don't think we're biased against math puzzles.

Maybe not. I apologize if it seems like I'm pointing fingers at anyone in particular.

No, I don't think it does, though I appreciate the apology just in case.

...and maybe I'm just a bit salty that I thought it was genuinely difficult and then everyone else said it was easy.

I get that part ^

but that just brings the conversation back to "just because it's hard doesn't make it a puzzle"

Yeah, I can understand that. It's happened to me too.

But at the core I acknowledge that even though it may be more advanced it's still a textbook problem

@MikeQ I never claimed it was easy (for me) I just don't think it's a puzzle

I also copped to being stumped until I saw the answer.

Oh, sorry, I wasn't trying to say it was easy

There's definitely a difference between "easy" and "rote". I certainly don't think it's easy. But it is just looking around the diagram for the next angle, side length or whatever you can deduce.

It might actually be pretty tough, I didn't try to solve it

Same, I just saw what looked to be a difficult textbook problem

Exactly! So, apologies if we weren't clear enough - I don't think anyone here thought the question was easy, but we might not have communicated that very well

Hard != a puzzle, in other words.

Ah, okay. I thought the justification was "This is so trivial, it's not worth asking"

You may be hard pressed to name what's in my pocket, but that hardly counts as a riddle.

Nope, it's definitely not trivial

but if you know the procedure, it's just tedious - there's no aha moment

@Mithrandir lol classic

@Mithrandir Do you even have pockets?

(Yes I know the reference)

Of course I do, and you'll never guess what's in them.

lint, I bet there's some in at least one of them

I've got a knife in one of 'em

Inhaler.

Keys.

Tissues

@Mithrandir He's going to kill us all! run for your lives!

Often my phone

@dcfyj 'tis a little hard to kill someone with a Swiss army knife from the other side of the world

@Mithrandir nice. I just thought it was funny juxtaposed with your name

@Mithrandir So you'd like us to think!

@Forklift he's probably the biggest Tolkien fan on puzzling.

Maybe even on Lit

Naaah.

christ, how big IS he?!

Whoever created the tolkien tag is ;)

I'm pretty sure Community isn't sentient enough to be a fan.

Anyone want to play Contact so that I can give GPR and Gareth more Tolkien clues? ;P

and see them fail?

(I'm leaving in ~5 minutes)

if it starts RIGHT NOW

Nah, they know the legendarium fairly well

But @Deusovi is dead to me.

Grab something from the Silmarilion!

Sure, I'd be up for Contact.

(or however it's spelled)

I'll try reading that again when I retire. that was a dry book last time I checked

No idea, I haven't even opened it

@Forklift it is. literature.stackexchange.com/q/2847/58

It took me a few days to get through it.

#humblebrag, lol

I think the copy I have is ~300 pages?

I enjoyed it, but then again I'm the kind of guy who liked reading through the appencides to LotR including all the pronunciation bits.

@Rubio those were awesomely interesting

There was so much info in there

Keleborn. face-palm I read it wrong the whole trilogy.

Random trivia: the guy who played Gandalf in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit (which I've never watched) kept trying to get them to stick to the book more.

hehe, nice

It was terrible

stick with the animated one

I dunno

with two films to work from, I think some fan could make a damned good edit that is a reasonable approximation of the book

Three films

and I doubt it

I've seen specific scenes, such as the dragon seen and the Bolg/Thorin fight seen.

*scene stupid autocucumber

er. sorry, i thought three and typed two. heh!

but I'm thinking like the fan supercut of Phantom Menace that, apparently, makes a watchable film out of it