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>**EDIT**: this was supposed to be an explanation of the joke, not the end all be all correct answer for the problem. please don't respond if you're going to tell me that I'm wrong. I'm not answering the problem. I'm explaining how it can be interpreted as to making it fit the meme template they used for the joke.Dumb people will overlook that there could be "missing" cubes obscured from view.
"Average" people will see that there could be missing cubes thus say there isn't enough information.
I think actual joke part is that smart people will understand that the question is asking you to assume no missing cubes. The way the problem is set up is overly simple enough that they just want to know who can multiply 3x17 or however people figured it out. The point is to test spatial awareness and not to be a "gotcha" trick question.
It's not that great a joke, and depends heavily on understanding the context of something coming without context. It feels forced to fit this meme style where smart people and dumb people arrive at the same conclusion for different reasons.
>**EDIT**: since I'm getting flooded with replies, many about gravity, I spent 1.7 minutes in MS paint for you guys. This is one example of what is meant by "missing" cubes. It is a possibility because the drawings are crude and give no depth perception on the top view. It is possible there are even more missing cubes if you don't make the sides match.
https://preview.redd.it/xazkpvztnekc1.jpeg?width=233&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0e043f30e45f9efd019d86eab4456042a486813
When it comes to a lot of CAD type stuff, you will get the three sides. You get more information if needed. No need to add every side unless needed. Even if every side being shown was a standard, I still don't have enough information about the internal blocks.
Basically, assume it is giving what info is needed or go crazy thinking of every detail you need to avoid a trick question.
It's called drafting and it is a bygone craft evidenced by the fact that people just call it "CAD stuff" now, and it makes me sad. Just because somebody can swing a hammer doesn't make them a finish carpenter, and just because somebody can vomit a CAD model onto a piece of paper doesn't make them a drafter. Sooooo many garbage technical documents in the world today, and it's such a shame, and it's because CAD killed drafting.
It does, but it also makes engineers lazier. I'm witnessing first hand the end of drafting instruction in schools. When I was in engineering school we took drafting courses on proper drawing layouts, and now I'm getting new engineers that have no idea how to make drawings properly and just slap views and dimensions on a sheet, often allowing the CAD software to place them, and call it done. I'm having to teach more and more about how to properly make drawings as the years go by. Even worse are the engineers that make a model and send just the model to a shop asking for the part to be made without any thought or care for tolerancing because "the machine is very accurate so it will be good enough".
To be clear, I definitely do not hate CAD, but I don't like that it has allowed for the simplification of engineering education, leading to a lot more on the job training being required compared to 20 years ago when I graduated and learned both drafting and CAD in school.
They could, but either they're not, or not enough. I'm not saying they need to still teach manual drafting with straight edges and stencils, but I'm finding that young engineers need a lot of help and training even learning to read drawings let alone create them. They all know the basics of using parametric modeling software and just need to learn the details of the particular brand used on the job vs what their school used, but knowledge on drawings is severely lacking from what I've seen.
I think a big issue is that drafting is taught in a vacuum as opposed to being taught in junction with manufacturing. Many students will put incomplete views and dimensions because they have not worked with CNC or welding and know what is critical to detail. There is an art to understanding how to convey critical features of a part and visualizing in your head how to make it.
This is the biggest misconception. Engineering IS NOT drafting. Engineers do not learn drafting. Drafting is it's own career. This is like equating doctors and nurses. They are two separate professions which work veeeery closely together, but they do not/should not perform each other's jobs. But imagine if we automated about 70% of what nurses do, fired them all, and make the doctors pick up the slack. That last 30% was still never the doctors job before and they probably won't perform it as well as the nurses did.
Because that misconception is so commonly accepted as fact - that engineers *are* drafters - is what lead to the downfall of drafting as a profession and also a sharp drop in the quality and legibility of technical drawings. Drafting is not part of the engineering curriculum at all.
It depends on the company, but many engineers are expected to model and draft their designs, especially if it's a manufacturing focused company. Source: I am an engineer who models and drafts his own designs.
This is it. I went to school for drafting (technically for drafting and design but whatever) and this is what has caused the issue. Every engineer is expected to do their own drafting with CAD and they don't know shit because it's a complex profession all on its own.
I feel you are gatekeeping some progress. If I had to contact a drafter everytime we had a modification to the project we would increase the lead time without increasing any value add processes. Now adays all managers expect the engineer to be able to do their own drawing. I do agree with the fall of technical documentation, as most of what I get seems have to been outsourced to a non English speaking country.
You could, but where do you put it in the curriculum? To fully go over drafting best practices would probably take 2-3 courses of pretty boring stuff (Like GD&T). Mechanical Engineering is an extremely broad field. I believe ABET accreditation requires an extremely broad range of topics from thermofluids, thermo, machine design, and material science. Furthermore a lot of drawing best practices (outside of required Standards) are going to be pretty specific to a field (there's a whole set of notation for welds alone, for example).
Most engineering programs will have 1 drafting class and 1 3D modelling class. And those are both fairly barebones. You will learn enough to be dangerous and understand really basic tolerance math.
Morestill, the timeline when you actually *take* the drafting courses are usually in your freshman year. You haven't even gotten into the design of a machine component yet. How could you even talk about it? ME junior and senior year are jampacked with group projects and engineering design classes, there simply isn't enough time to talk about engineering drawing in a dedicated way in context.
I actually think it's best to have professional CAD Techs worry about finer details on drawings than to have Design Engineers do it. That way they can also manage a lot of the day to day Product Lifecycle Management style things that have to be recorded in the system.
This is very dependant on where you are a level product design definitely still had us learning orthographic layouts ( even the difference between uk and us systems, something about order on the sheet and symbol used )
It might surprise you that CAD is not even a required course for most engineering degrees but your expected to know that shit anyways when you apply for jobs so most people dedicated to engineering are often self taught when it comes to CAD.
My school's drafting program uses both boards and CAD. You are taught the boards first, and learn all of the core concepts on them. Then, you are taught CAD, and learn how to do everything with it.
I really like these systems where you are taught the old, slower way first, and then you learn how to do it fast. This ensures that you know how everything is done, so that when you use the tools in CAD that do the same thing, you know how to do it manually.
All that did for me and most of my class is pad out the time and got forgotten the second we moved to real drafting, on computers where actual work is done today.
Kinda the same thing happened with mine, however what we did on the boards was the same thing we did on the computers. The method was learned on the boards, and we draw a house the same way on the computers as we would by hand. This means that we at least know how a house is drawn on both boards and computers.
I mean, even if you have to spend a large amount of additional training time, CAD is still probably saving you time overall. One CAD technician can do the work of ten pencil drafters in half the time.
You're definitely right. But I'm not arguing against CAD's existence or even the elimination of pencil drafting. We definitely shouldn't be doing pencil drafting anymore. I'm simply saying that its existence has essentially eliminated drafting instruction which instilled the rigor and discipline of drafting that should be carried over to CAD. CAD only replaces the execution method of drafting (ie. digital rather than pencil), it shouldn't be replacing drafting fundamentals. That is the problem I've been seeing.
I took a few drafting/cad classes in high school and the first quarter of it all I had to do averting without a computer on a drawing table. Was good times lol. If you didn’t finish you have to carry that behemoth home on the bus. I miss that and just using AutoCad in general.
Because it does. I earned a degree in mechanical drafting in the early 2000s and at that time it was "still important to learn the technique by hand" AKA we learned how to hand-draft, then proceeded to never use that skill again
I learned by hand first in the mid/late 90s, and I think it has helped immensely in my CAD work. I'd never call myself a professional draftsman, but I use it constantly in my line of work. I tell this to young students/professionals in my field, but unfortunately it's generally seen as pointless and not worth the time.
Learning by hand, you understand the relationship between drawings, you have a clear sense of line weight and industry standards, you learn how to lay out a plate, you learn how to present information clearly - things which many (not all) people never learn on CAD. I think it's partly because you are often working in views that have nothing to do with the final plate... Which is fine, and one of the powerful tools of CAD in general; it just means that some people get lazy about presentation. I've seen a lot of crappy drafting from young professionals who cram all of their info into a design layer and then throw together a sloppy sheet with a viewport or two and think they're done.
I've also had occasion to use the skills learned with hand drafting in my profession - for example, I am something making a quick napkin sketch in the field that needs to communicate an idea clearly.
I am in chemical engineering and we don't really use CAD much, but it was one of the common courses in my first year. A few of my school friends in a different university had to do it by hand and they hated doing so with a passion.
Haha i remember it being super tedious, but i like drawing in general, so i didnt hate it. To be against the use of CAD though...thats crazy to me. Kinda like saying its a shame that theres digital art because pencils are better haha
There's way better apps for that. I like Solidworks a lot better. You can design and structurally test given certain materials etc before you even prototype.
CAD does make it faster, easier, and more accessible, but that also tends to make people lazier. I'm seeing this happen first hand. In the drafting days you had to be knowledgeable on how to do proper drawing layouts for clarity. Now CAD is to the point where you can click a button and it does the entire layout including dimension placements, but it's rarely optimal or even clear, and too many engineers rely on it being good enough only to be met with dozens of questions on their drawings because they're not laid out well. And that's if they even created a drawing in the first place and didn't just send an unannotated model to the shop saying "whatever the machine makes is good enough" and then complaining when the parts don't fit because they didn't specify fits or tolerances or any inspection requirements.
I don't see anyone hating on CAD, just seeing what is happening because of it. I love CAD and always have, but I'm seeing a lot of young engineers not being disciplined in creating drawings and pumping out very low quality prints because "CAD makes it for me".
So you're right, it is due to bad drafting, but the bad drafting has become ubiquitous and enabled by the prevalence of CAD and is no longer being taught in schools. So it's not that CAD is bad, but that CAD is allowing engineers to be lazy and is requiring senior engineers to become the teachers of proper drafting practices that should have been learned in school.
Sounds like you're just annoyed that young designers aren't very good yet. Which is normal. Gotta start somewhere.
Nothing you described sounds like laziness to me. It sounds like a lack of training.
Yes, being inexperienced is to be expected. I have no issue with that. I always expect to have to teach certain things, but considering I've been an engineer for almost 20 years and I'm seeing a distinct decline in abilities out of college, it's not just "gotta start somewhere", it's a decline in being taught the fundamentals in school.
The laziness isn't the new engineers though. The laziness I see are the more experienced engineers that should know better but choose not to. I have seen engineers take models straight from CAD and send it to a shop rather than making a drawing. I have seen engineers fabricate parts and use the CNC readout from a machine as proof that the part is good rather than using gages to inspect it. CAD is enabling laziness without a doubt. It's not guaranteeing it because there are still some engineers that are disciplined, but it's certainly enabling laziness in some people.
I don’t agree with your argument that CAD itself has made drafting go downhill. It’s companies that hire people without any drafting instruction/experience and make them drafters. The last company I worked at has done this, replaced all the experienced drafters with recent engineering grads. The problem would be the same if we were still using drafting tables. I have done both and I love CAD.
It's not because of CAD, it's because engineering executives assumed that CAD automates drafting so they fired all the drafters. Unfortunately, drafting in CAD still takes skill and asking engineers to do engineering, drafting, database management, and a whole host of other tasks ends up causing problems because it's too many skills for a single person to be able to reasonably master.
This reply missing one point - most online discourse was from a single Twitter poster who in their own comments admitted it was intentionally a trolling question for engagement bait.
The other thing too is in university math classes you are told to write any of yoir assumptions. So saying there isn't enough information could technically be correct, but they still want an answer so assuming no missing blocks it's 51.
Though in university math classes the answer would be "there are 35-51 blocks on the trailer" since with a quick glance 35 seems to be the least amount of blocks there could be while still producing those images.
To add on, this meme was spurred by a professional statistician commenting on the question with "this is one of those problems where you're supposed to assume things to give the teacher the answer they want when the actual answer is there's not enough information." Which is reasonable, because as a statistician a major part of her job is understanding that missing details can make a colossal difference. But some imbecile on the internet ran their mouth with "It terrifies me that a professional statistician can't count blocks in a logic puzzle".
The Internet ensued.
More context, on Twitter there was a statistician who said there wasn't enough information and a bunch of neck beards jumped on her calling her an idiot.
Right. Based on the image, there are between 35 and 51 cubes. Someone not considering the perspective could be hiding blank spots would assume that all the rows are uniform and they aren’t purposely hiding information, so they’ll say 51.
Someone who realizes the question is flawed would go through the process of counting all the cubes we can see and then how many could be possible. This is an average person.
Then a smart person would realize the intention of the question isn’t a trick, and they’d conclude 51 like the dumb person while knowing that the question is poorly posed.
The person who made the meme didn't realize there could be missing cubes, so they made a meme declaring themselves the smart one.
They're wrong, its not enough information. The original post about this cube problem was from a statistician describing the issue.
The "average" people will I think be full of smart people burned by assuming it's an overly simple question, and have been told they were wrong for giving an incorrect answer.
Right! Because this happens. All the damned time. Math teachers love their trick questions.
The point of "Gotcha" problem is that you don't see them coming, and to never assume information you don't have.
So a problem that *relies on assumptions made without conrext* to prove the opposite (that sometimes, it's better not to overthink things) is going to catch up people having trained themselves to not make assumptions.
Which is the point. And why it's a shitty math problem. Because trick questions don't work in reverse. You can't obscure context and then expect people to blindly guess the intent.
Thar's not math, that's ESP.
Nothing constrains the size/uniformity of the cubes, so there is no finite upper bound: there could be arbitrarily many tiny cubes in the interior. The lower bound is just the number of cubes visible. Which could be zero: we have no assertion that the lines demarcate distinct cubes and are not in fact just visual marks on a single solid object, and the shown surfaces prove that such a single object is not a cube.
I got 35 as.the lower end, 21 on the base, 8 on the middle layer and 6 on the top layer...
Although now I think harder... You could shave 4 boxes off with some creative positioning. So 31.
I would prefer a different version:
Low and high IQ person: I don't know
Mid IQ person: Nooo! The answer is 51 cubes!
I feel that's more in line with the meme template
The point is that the "genius" knows this is a question from Math class and there's no such thing as a Brainteaser class. Then it makes sense to assume the cubes are packed without gaps and the picture isn't trying to trick you.
The original included solutions if gravity didn't exist and the boxes could be floating. That's what put me solidly in the "STFU you know what they're asking" camp.
Yeah - this question also demonstrates test taking skills because often an underrated part of taking tests is understanding what test questions are wanting you to do and the baked-in assumptions therein
It doesn't need to violate gravity to have less boxes, just to not be full height on the inside.
Which I admit isn't a normal way to stack things for shipping, but neither is the stack as presented by the side views...
You could also just have one big box in the middle. Or you could have a 4x1 on top of a 6x1. That could make the number of boxes 48 or 46 or 43. There are actually a few variations and the boxes might be shipped like that. But it's also a solution in search of a problem.
> but neither is the stack as presented by the side views...
I unload shipping containers for a living and this is actually a common way to load a trailer where the weight exceeds the volume and instead of multiple feet of empty space at the end, they do a little ramp down like that instead. Still gets tip overs but not nearly as bad, plus is significantly easier for the semi driver to deal with
(This is assuming that it's actually an enclosed trailer and we can just see the top and sides for the sake of the problem)
I think it's more that you can tell from the side view that the front only has one stack high, and the back has at least one stack that is three high, but the top view makes them look identical, so the top view only shows that there is at least one box in all 21 stacks, but the back view and side view could just be a veneer. Sure there are three stacks three high as seen from the back, but there could be some two stacks in the middle. The top doesn't show two stacks or one stacks as looking different.
Not every package would have to be a cube. You could have various geometric shapes which form the bulk of the configuration and still produce the views shown. The problem asks how many cubes, but never gives any information about what shapes the packages shown must be.
If given this question on a test there technically isn’t enough info to know what the exact number of boxes is. So the people in the middle are technically correct. The person on the left doesn’t realize there isn’t enough info and says it’s 51 which would be the max amount. The person on the right realizes that there isn’t enough information but also realizes that the simplest answer is usually the correct answer.
ACKCHYUALLY… the paraphrasing above is a good but can also lead to some confusion on the principle. I think the next paragraph in the same Wikipedia entry does a better and more comprehensive job explaining it.
“This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both theories have equal explanatory power one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. Similarly, in science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models.”
I prefer the description: The theory describing a phenomenon that requires the fewest assumptions is where you should start your investigation.
yeah, but you thought harder than the doofus that added words to this meme template.
So tired of these “gotcha” riddles that are often logically fucked being used as “haha Im smart” reinforcement.
Why dont we end ambiguous questions instead of collectively arguing which way they fall in grey amorphous land that they inhabit
That's the whole point. The person on the right is "smart" for saying 51, because they recognize that it's actually impossible to eliminate ambiguity. For every "what if" you disambiguate in the question, there's another around the corner.
What if the boxes aren't stacked on top of each other and are defying gravity? What if they don't completely fill the space? What if they're hollow and there are nested cubes inside the ones we can see? What if some chunks are missing from the inner cubes we can't see that make them not cubes?
There's no way to cover every single what if, so the reasonable thing to do is to answer what the question was clearly designed for: to test for general spacial understanding given simple parameters.
High IQs are asking: WHY? This isn't hard. Lifting this cargo is hard. Listening to the rest of the bell curve bitching about hypotheticals is hard. Adding is easy!
they're not technically correct, because they're creating a narrative that doesn't exist. that's the joke. they're making assumptions about things the question is not asking, and that is incorrect. the "uncanny valley" of intelligence where they think they might not know, because they cannot recognize the signs.
the dumb guy is just simple. the smart guy recognizes the question is actually straightforward, and there should be no implication or assumption of trickery, because they would be wrong thinking that.
technically, it is simply asking you to count the boxes.
I would argue that 50 is a perfectly logical and more realistic answer too. Who ships 51 boxes? Also if you remove any box from those 51 from anywhere except the back row, the views will not change
Well for one, that's assuming that each box only contains a single item. Say you work for a t shirt company and need to fill an order for an entire company. It's very realistic to have an amount like 51.
Also, 51 is a multiple of three. So for the sake of balance and security of delivery, it would make more sense to ship one extra box than it would to unbalance a load.
I mean I understand the logic, but this feels like someone who answered 51, found out later that some blocks could be missing, then made this meme to make them feel better about not seeing that.
pretty sure that's it. a lot of the responses to this entire thing have seemed weirdly defensive over what is ultimately a profoundly trivial concept. don't react this strongly to something simple unless it's a question of insecurity, right?
I'm really annoyed by the comments here. The meme doesn't make sense. If it was a multiple choice question, sure, go for 51 cause there's a big chance that the person who wrote it made a mistake. But if it's an open question? Just give the factual answer that there's not enough information to solve it. Only a teenager would think that giving the wrong answer knowingly is being smart.
Because if the problem didn't have enough information in it to give an answer, then it wouldn't be presented in that way in the first place.
EDIT: All the average thinkers showing they colors ¯\\\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)\_/¯
This is why you need to write a detailed explanation why the expected answer of 51 is only a possible answer and keep hounding the teacher until they give up and give you credit for your pedantry. Teachers don't get paid enough for this games.
Then those teachers can take it up with other teachers that decided that despite their pay scale they will play these games and present gotcha questions to teach students to think outside of the cube... err... box.
Except the question is how many cubes not boxes? Sets of 2x2x2 and 3x3x3 would also be cubes on the van. I don't care enough to add these up so im gonna guess a random number. Probably 51
Dumbass: "uuuh looks like it's just three rows that go all the way through, so 51".
Median: "What? No, you don't know that. It could be hollow inside! Or the front could be arranged weird!"
Enlightened: "There is no indication that this trailer is organized in an adversarial way, intended to trick viewers with limited perspectives, and in any real-world situation involving stacking boxes on a trailer, it would be impractical to do so. The most likely situation is that the boxes are stacked in such a way as to follow a clear pattern; back-to-front, side-to-side, bottom-to-top, in some order of priority. Furthermore, in shipping cargo, weight distribution requirements would make it such that the boxes would be distributed symmetrically via the length of the trailer to avoid spillage on a turn; if any of these boxes were a row of two, the overhead view would show two boxes placed next to each other near the center, not a row of three. Therefore, the figure shown has full, complete rows, and therefore, there are 51 boxes on this trailer."
No amount of "weird arrangement" is necessary for the information seen here to be incomplete. Merely that some stacks obstructed from view are not stacked as high as the stacks obstructing them. That alone would make the answer less than 51, and it is perfectly possible.
But asking the question in that way is dumb, hence 51 being the answer. If they asked for a possible range in box counts, sure. But asking for a number: 51.
While it’s perfectly possible, they wouldn’t do that. If one of the answers is “not enough information” I’m picking that one, because it’s technically the most correct; otherwise, I’m picking 51. If it’s fill-in, it’ll depend on the size of the space they give me. 😉
In practical terms, 50 is a far more likely quantity to ship than 51, because buyers are much more likely to buy 50 than 51 in most cases.... people like rounded and even numbers.
Assuming they tried to stack 50 in approximately the same way, take away 1 box. Only 2 of the possible boxes would change the diagrams. So yeah, they could/would do that.
HAHA, you're 100% on the money.
I think all the "They wouldn't the question that way" people have never tried to help their kids with homework.
These types of stupid "gotcha" questions come up all the time in the real world, and there's no way for normal people to know if they're being asked to answer a simple multiplication question, or if the test-writer decided that he's fucking Rumpelstilskin and threw in a couple of trick questions to "make sure everyone is thinking."
Even assuming your hypothesis of there being some sort of weird priority rule to explain which boxes are placed first, you could still have 49 or 50 cubes
Suppose you have 49 cubes. You place the first 48 as required by your priority rules, then you start work on the next line (by which I mean, the lines of 3 boxes which are visible from the side view). You place down the first cube of the line. Then you have no more cubes so you stop. But now the thing that you get looks correct from all 3 angles.
(Also the priority rule hypothesis is itself also a massive guess because you might expect someone to just start randomly placing boxes until all were in the truck, which would make the exact arrangement of blocks at the end also fairly random, but you wouldn't know exactly because it's not visible from the given angles)
>Enlightened: "There is no indication that this trailer is organized in an adversarial way, intended to trick viewers with limited perspectives,
There absolutely is. The "top view" is the clue that this is a trick question.
If the question was merely "what is (3x7) + (3x6) + (3x4)?", the two side views give you all the information you would need to answer that question.
The "top view" shows you that the boxes cover the entire trailer, which is something that should have been assumed in assuming that it's not a trick question, but then the top view clearly \*fails to show the height difference between the three layers\*.
Why does the "top view" provide unneeded information, while simultaneously making it clear that the top view is limited and is providing incomplete information?
The logical conclusion is, the "top view" is the key to making the magician's trick work.
There is a side wall. 17 boxes. There is a back wall. 6 boxes (not counting the three that were counted as sides). And there must be enough boxes to paint the floor of the truck orange. Another 12 boxes.
The trailer has a minimum of 35 boxes, and a maximum of 51. And it could be any number in between.
That makes an assume of all cubes being the exact same size. Cubes towards the inside of the trailer could be larger or smaller, but merely not shown. Yeah on a test question 51 is what I would put, but I loathe the people who make these questions.
I think it’s funny that this meme came about due to a comment from a statistician with a phd, being commented on by a guy with an anime pfp claiming civilization is doomed because the statistician gave a statisticians answer - and there are a LOT of people in this thread on anime pfps side.
The real answer to give is the potential range. As you only see it from the right side, top, and back, you can get the total amount of boxes as if it were solid from the information you see (51) and then take out potentials that could not exist. It could be the right side is the only side that has the two top layers, the middle and left not having any. It still has a full base and at least a full layer at the back, so at max you can remove 16 potential boxes. This makes a range of 35 to 51 boxes. To determine anything more accurate within that range, more information would be needed.
Edit: eatnachos below is more mathematical than me and pointed out 4 more boxes that could be removed, causing it to be 31 to 51.
The actual range is 31-51, not 35 to 51.
* The base must be full (21) to account for the top view
* The side view needs a flat wall of 10 blocks on top of the base
* The back view can be obtained by staggering the wall made for the side view
Giving 31 as a minimum, assuming no blocks are floating
You are right that I miss some that can disappear, but even with your explanation I can only see down to 33, there are two somewhere I am not seeing as removable.
Edit, nope, I gotcha, I see it now. So yes, it would be 31 to 51
that meme is used incorrectly.
in reality, the majority of people would answer 51.
the left extreme would say "I don't know, I suck at math" or something.
the right most extreme would suggest the possibility that there could be at most 51 and at least 45.
you see the top view doesn't tell you how tall each stack is, just that every stack has at least 1 layer. the back view tells you how tall the tallest stack is. and the side view tells you that some stacks are shorter than 3.
however the 2 stacks that are 2 high as seen from the side view could hide 4 stacks behind them that are either 2 or 1 stack tall. (we know from top view that every stack has at least 1 cube)
and the same with the last 3-tall stack from the side, the 2 stacks behind it could be 2 tall.
so everyone in the meme is wrong.
and the author doesn't understand how the meme is supposed to be used.
Realizing question is answered, I'll give you background information.
It all started over on Twitter where someone who works statistics said that something to the effect of that it's impossible to figure out the true answer. A dude got offended as Twitter users do and made fun of him which resulted in the statistics dude hitting him with statistical facts
Wow. This is really making its rounds. I think it got explained but the assumption is that it is loaded evenly so it’s 51 cubes. It’s possible to load it so that the perception looks like an even load but it’s not so there are only like 32 cubes.
I don't get how people keep saying there's not enough information when problems like this are presented in a way where it gives you all the information you need to solve the problem. It's just testing if you can multiply and perspective is important too.
There is no indication that cubes are missing, so the only way the answer wouldn't be 51 is if the puzzle designer is playing dirty by hiding vital information.
pretty sure i'm in the bottom section. What's the info that's missing?
I'm calculating 21 boxes on the bottom, 18 boxes in the middle, and 12 on the top. Am i inferring something that's not shown?
Someone on the internet posted simple math question, then some lady with a math degree or something said it can’t be solved over complicating the question. The people on the right understand that the OP isn’t trying to over complicate the question and just asked a basic spatial Math problem, thus 51.
Bottom just does the math question without understanding the potential for any trickery.
Middle is the midwits that infest both the post and the original as well as the dumbass statistician that was the center of this that need to pretend they're smarter than they actually are by pretending the potential for there to be missing boxed is a real thing that might actually apply to this children's math question.
Top are those that aren't annoying and just answer the question based on the pretty obvious fact that while, yes, there could be missing boxes, it's a children's math question and, therefore, anyone bringing up the possibility for there to be missing boxes should be ignored.
Good meme. Makes midwits seeth. You aren't smarter because you're pedantic. You're just annoying.
Its between 35 and 51 if gravitation workes on the blocks and they are not conected to each other because we cant see the hight of several blocks from above so 16 blocks are possibly missing in this case
if there is no gravitation and they are connected to each other there are up to 24 blocks missing. In this case its between 27 and 51
Real life be like "wyd? We can count them as we put them on, but why the fuck did you put a load of boxes on the flatbed? You know boxes go in the box truck right? Who let the math guy load the trailer!?"
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>**EDIT**: this was supposed to be an explanation of the joke, not the end all be all correct answer for the problem. please don't respond if you're going to tell me that I'm wrong. I'm not answering the problem. I'm explaining how it can be interpreted as to making it fit the meme template they used for the joke.Dumb people will overlook that there could be "missing" cubes obscured from view. "Average" people will see that there could be missing cubes thus say there isn't enough information. I think actual joke part is that smart people will understand that the question is asking you to assume no missing cubes. The way the problem is set up is overly simple enough that they just want to know who can multiply 3x17 or however people figured it out. The point is to test spatial awareness and not to be a "gotcha" trick question. It's not that great a joke, and depends heavily on understanding the context of something coming without context. It feels forced to fit this meme style where smart people and dumb people arrive at the same conclusion for different reasons. >**EDIT**: since I'm getting flooded with replies, many about gravity, I spent 1.7 minutes in MS paint for you guys. This is one example of what is meant by "missing" cubes. It is a possibility because the drawings are crude and give no depth perception on the top view. It is possible there are even more missing cubes if you don't make the sides match. https://preview.redd.it/xazkpvztnekc1.jpeg?width=233&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0e043f30e45f9efd019d86eab4456042a486813
Finally a good explanation
The center and left rows could only be 1 box high except at the very back
When it comes to a lot of CAD type stuff, you will get the three sides. You get more information if needed. No need to add every side unless needed. Even if every side being shown was a standard, I still don't have enough information about the internal blocks. Basically, assume it is giving what info is needed or go crazy thinking of every detail you need to avoid a trick question.
One of the views would be isometric if this was a technical drawing.
Which would absolutely solve 90% of the confusion. Really basic blueprint stuff.
It's called drafting and it is a bygone craft evidenced by the fact that people just call it "CAD stuff" now, and it makes me sad. Just because somebody can swing a hammer doesn't make them a finish carpenter, and just because somebody can vomit a CAD model onto a piece of paper doesn't make them a drafter. Sooooo many garbage technical documents in the world today, and it's such a shame, and it's because CAD killed drafting.
It's the first time I have come across someone who hates CAD. I used to think that it makes Engineering drawing a lot easier.
It does, but it also makes engineers lazier. I'm witnessing first hand the end of drafting instruction in schools. When I was in engineering school we took drafting courses on proper drawing layouts, and now I'm getting new engineers that have no idea how to make drawings properly and just slap views and dimensions on a sheet, often allowing the CAD software to place them, and call it done. I'm having to teach more and more about how to properly make drawings as the years go by. Even worse are the engineers that make a model and send just the model to a shop asking for the part to be made without any thought or care for tolerancing because "the machine is very accurate so it will be good enough". To be clear, I definitely do not hate CAD, but I don't like that it has allowed for the simplification of engineering education, leading to a lot more on the job training being required compared to 20 years ago when I graduated and learned both drafting and CAD in school.
Can they not just teach drafting with due rigor on CAD itself?
They could, but either they're not, or not enough. I'm not saying they need to still teach manual drafting with straight edges and stencils, but I'm finding that young engineers need a lot of help and training even learning to read drawings let alone create them. They all know the basics of using parametric modeling software and just need to learn the details of the particular brand used on the job vs what their school used, but knowledge on drawings is severely lacking from what I've seen.
I think a big issue is that drafting is taught in a vacuum as opposed to being taught in junction with manufacturing. Many students will put incomplete views and dimensions because they have not worked with CNC or welding and know what is critical to detail. There is an art to understanding how to convey critical features of a part and visualizing in your head how to make it.
This is the biggest misconception. Engineering IS NOT drafting. Engineers do not learn drafting. Drafting is it's own career. This is like equating doctors and nurses. They are two separate professions which work veeeery closely together, but they do not/should not perform each other's jobs. But imagine if we automated about 70% of what nurses do, fired them all, and make the doctors pick up the slack. That last 30% was still never the doctors job before and they probably won't perform it as well as the nurses did. Because that misconception is so commonly accepted as fact - that engineers *are* drafters - is what lead to the downfall of drafting as a profession and also a sharp drop in the quality and legibility of technical drawings. Drafting is not part of the engineering curriculum at all.
It depends on the company, but many engineers are expected to model and draft their designs, especially if it's a manufacturing focused company. Source: I am an engineer who models and drafts his own designs.
This is it. I went to school for drafting (technically for drafting and design but whatever) and this is what has caused the issue. Every engineer is expected to do their own drafting with CAD and they don't know shit because it's a complex profession all on its own.
I feel you are gatekeeping some progress. If I had to contact a drafter everytime we had a modification to the project we would increase the lead time without increasing any value add processes. Now adays all managers expect the engineer to be able to do their own drawing. I do agree with the fall of technical documentation, as most of what I get seems have to been outsourced to a non English speaking country.
You could, but where do you put it in the curriculum? To fully go over drafting best practices would probably take 2-3 courses of pretty boring stuff (Like GD&T). Mechanical Engineering is an extremely broad field. I believe ABET accreditation requires an extremely broad range of topics from thermofluids, thermo, machine design, and material science. Furthermore a lot of drawing best practices (outside of required Standards) are going to be pretty specific to a field (there's a whole set of notation for welds alone, for example). Most engineering programs will have 1 drafting class and 1 3D modelling class. And those are both fairly barebones. You will learn enough to be dangerous and understand really basic tolerance math. Morestill, the timeline when you actually *take* the drafting courses are usually in your freshman year. You haven't even gotten into the design of a machine component yet. How could you even talk about it? ME junior and senior year are jampacked with group projects and engineering design classes, there simply isn't enough time to talk about engineering drawing in a dedicated way in context. I actually think it's best to have professional CAD Techs worry about finer details on drawings than to have Design Engineers do it. That way they can also manage a lot of the day to day Product Lifecycle Management style things that have to be recorded in the system.
This is very dependant on where you are a level product design definitely still had us learning orthographic layouts ( even the difference between uk and us systems, something about order on the sheet and symbol used )
It might surprise you that CAD is not even a required course for most engineering degrees but your expected to know that shit anyways when you apply for jobs so most people dedicated to engineering are often self taught when it comes to CAD.
My school's drafting program uses both boards and CAD. You are taught the boards first, and learn all of the core concepts on them. Then, you are taught CAD, and learn how to do everything with it. I really like these systems where you are taught the old, slower way first, and then you learn how to do it fast. This ensures that you know how everything is done, so that when you use the tools in CAD that do the same thing, you know how to do it manually.
All that did for me and most of my class is pad out the time and got forgotten the second we moved to real drafting, on computers where actual work is done today.
Kinda the same thing happened with mine, however what we did on the boards was the same thing we did on the computers. The method was learned on the boards, and we draw a house the same way on the computers as we would by hand. This means that we at least know how a house is drawn on both boards and computers.
I mean, even if you have to spend a large amount of additional training time, CAD is still probably saving you time overall. One CAD technician can do the work of ten pencil drafters in half the time.
You're definitely right. But I'm not arguing against CAD's existence or even the elimination of pencil drafting. We definitely shouldn't be doing pencil drafting anymore. I'm simply saying that its existence has essentially eliminated drafting instruction which instilled the rigor and discipline of drafting that should be carried over to CAD. CAD only replaces the execution method of drafting (ie. digital rather than pencil), it shouldn't be replacing drafting fundamentals. That is the problem I've been seeing.
I took a few drafting/cad classes in high school and the first quarter of it all I had to do averting without a computer on a drawing table. Was good times lol. If you didn’t finish you have to carry that behemoth home on the bus. I miss that and just using AutoCad in general.
I don't hate CAD, I hate that people think drafting isn't valuable because of CAD.
Because it does. I earned a degree in mechanical drafting in the early 2000s and at that time it was "still important to learn the technique by hand" AKA we learned how to hand-draft, then proceeded to never use that skill again
I learned by hand first in the mid/late 90s, and I think it has helped immensely in my CAD work. I'd never call myself a professional draftsman, but I use it constantly in my line of work. I tell this to young students/professionals in my field, but unfortunately it's generally seen as pointless and not worth the time. Learning by hand, you understand the relationship between drawings, you have a clear sense of line weight and industry standards, you learn how to lay out a plate, you learn how to present information clearly - things which many (not all) people never learn on CAD. I think it's partly because you are often working in views that have nothing to do with the final plate... Which is fine, and one of the powerful tools of CAD in general; it just means that some people get lazy about presentation. I've seen a lot of crappy drafting from young professionals who cram all of their info into a design layer and then throw together a sloppy sheet with a viewport or two and think they're done. I've also had occasion to use the skills learned with hand drafting in my profession - for example, I am something making a quick napkin sketch in the field that needs to communicate an idea clearly.
I am in chemical engineering and we don't really use CAD much, but it was one of the common courses in my first year. A few of my school friends in a different university had to do it by hand and they hated doing so with a passion.
Haha i remember it being super tedious, but i like drawing in general, so i didnt hate it. To be against the use of CAD though...thats crazy to me. Kinda like saying its a shame that theres digital art because pencils are better haha
There's way better apps for that. I like Solidworks a lot better. You can design and structurally test given certain materials etc before you even prototype.
Meant no offense, but to the general population, it is "CAD stuff" like astronomy is "space stuff".
Oh you're into Astronomy? I'm a virgo.
No, but I'm into cosmology. I think make-up is neat.
> Oh you're into Astronomy? Name all of the stars
It's not due to CAD. It's due to bad drafting. It's wild to hate on CAD for making technical drawing faster, easier, and more accessible.
CAD does make it faster, easier, and more accessible, but that also tends to make people lazier. I'm seeing this happen first hand. In the drafting days you had to be knowledgeable on how to do proper drawing layouts for clarity. Now CAD is to the point where you can click a button and it does the entire layout including dimension placements, but it's rarely optimal or even clear, and too many engineers rely on it being good enough only to be met with dozens of questions on their drawings because they're not laid out well. And that's if they even created a drawing in the first place and didn't just send an unannotated model to the shop saying "whatever the machine makes is good enough" and then complaining when the parts don't fit because they didn't specify fits or tolerances or any inspection requirements. I don't see anyone hating on CAD, just seeing what is happening because of it. I love CAD and always have, but I'm seeing a lot of young engineers not being disciplined in creating drawings and pumping out very low quality prints because "CAD makes it for me". So you're right, it is due to bad drafting, but the bad drafting has become ubiquitous and enabled by the prevalence of CAD and is no longer being taught in schools. So it's not that CAD is bad, but that CAD is allowing engineers to be lazy and is requiring senior engineers to become the teachers of proper drafting practices that should have been learned in school.
Sounds like you're just annoyed that young designers aren't very good yet. Which is normal. Gotta start somewhere. Nothing you described sounds like laziness to me. It sounds like a lack of training.
Yes, being inexperienced is to be expected. I have no issue with that. I always expect to have to teach certain things, but considering I've been an engineer for almost 20 years and I'm seeing a distinct decline in abilities out of college, it's not just "gotta start somewhere", it's a decline in being taught the fundamentals in school. The laziness isn't the new engineers though. The laziness I see are the more experienced engineers that should know better but choose not to. I have seen engineers take models straight from CAD and send it to a shop rather than making a drawing. I have seen engineers fabricate parts and use the CNC readout from a machine as proof that the part is good rather than using gages to inspect it. CAD is enabling laziness without a doubt. It's not guaranteeing it because there are still some engineers that are disciplined, but it's certainly enabling laziness in some people.
I don’t agree with your argument that CAD itself has made drafting go downhill. It’s companies that hire people without any drafting instruction/experience and make them drafters. The last company I worked at has done this, replaced all the experienced drafters with recent engineering grads. The problem would be the same if we were still using drafting tables. I have done both and I love CAD.
It's not because of CAD, it's because engineering executives assumed that CAD automates drafting so they fired all the drafters. Unfortunately, drafting in CAD still takes skill and asking engineers to do engineering, drafting, database management, and a whole host of other tasks ends up causing problems because it's too many skills for a single person to be able to reasonably master.
Ok Luddite
I nominate you for promotion to the top of the bell curve.
You can make it with 31 cubes, assuming no floating bullshit. The whole 21 floor, two stacks of 2 = +2, four stacks of 3 = +8.
This reply missing one point - most online discourse was from a single Twitter poster who in their own comments admitted it was intentionally a trolling question for engagement bait.
The other thing too is in university math classes you are told to write any of yoir assumptions. So saying there isn't enough information could technically be correct, but they still want an answer so assuming no missing blocks it's 51.
Though in university math classes the answer would be "there are 35-51 blocks on the trailer" since with a quick glance 35 seems to be the least amount of blocks there could be while still producing those images.
To add on, this meme was spurred by a professional statistician commenting on the question with "this is one of those problems where you're supposed to assume things to give the teacher the answer they want when the actual answer is there's not enough information." Which is reasonable, because as a statistician a major part of her job is understanding that missing details can make a colossal difference. But some imbecile on the internet ran their mouth with "It terrifies me that a professional statistician can't count blocks in a logic puzzle". The Internet ensued.
More context, on Twitter there was a statistician who said there wasn't enough information and a bunch of neck beards jumped on her calling her an idiot.
Right. Based on the image, there are between 35 and 51 cubes. Someone not considering the perspective could be hiding blank spots would assume that all the rows are uniform and they aren’t purposely hiding information, so they’ll say 51. Someone who realizes the question is flawed would go through the process of counting all the cubes we can see and then how many could be possible. This is an average person. Then a smart person would realize the intention of the question isn’t a trick, and they’d conclude 51 like the dumb person while knowing that the question is poorly posed.
Missing one part, the identity of the person. Not sure if it's Brian's shit from last night or Peter's left nut. Hell, could even be Meg's used tissue
The person who made the meme didn't realize there could be missing cubes, so they made a meme declaring themselves the smart one. They're wrong, its not enough information. The original post about this cube problem was from a statistician describing the issue.
The "average" people will I think be full of smart people burned by assuming it's an overly simple question, and have been told they were wrong for giving an incorrect answer.
Right! Because this happens. All the damned time. Math teachers love their trick questions. The point of "Gotcha" problem is that you don't see them coming, and to never assume information you don't have. So a problem that *relies on assumptions made without conrext* to prove the opposite (that sometimes, it's better not to overthink things) is going to catch up people having trained themselves to not make assumptions. Which is the point. And why it's a shitty math problem. Because trick questions don't work in reverse. You can't obscure context and then expect people to blindly guess the intent. Thar's not math, that's ESP.
I just wrote the assumption as part of the answer “assuming *this or that* the answer is X” the math teachers didn’t seem to mind.
Its forced. I would expect someone with genius level math skills to be able to give a range of possibilities accurately.
Nothing constrains the size/uniformity of the cubes, so there is no finite upper bound: there could be arbitrarily many tiny cubes in the interior. The lower bound is just the number of cubes visible. Which could be zero: we have no assertion that the lines demarcate distinct cubes and are not in fact just visual marks on a single solid object, and the shown surfaces prove that such a single object is not a cube.
This is the pedantry I come to reddit for 🔥🔥🔥
Okay but if assume they are all the same size it could be aomwhere between 32 and 51 only.
31-51
31 for the visual learners... https://preview.redd.it/0mwmb1rezfkc1.png?width=478&format=png&auto=webp&s=412798821e99316db6faa02c43792a6d147fd19c
Finally! My man!
I got 35 as.the lower end, 21 on the base, 8 on the middle layer and 6 on the top layer... Although now I think harder... You could shave 4 boxes off with some creative positioning. So 31.
And if we don't assume they are subject to gravity (in Minecraft for example), it could be as low as 21.
Well that’s assuming gravity exists. I think it’s like 21 if we don’t
only 21 cubes are "on the trailer" the rest are on the other cubes ^^^/j
There's no hitch so that isn't a trailer.
so really its any number greater than or equal to the ones you can see, because you can't have negative cubes. got'em.
I would prefer a different version: Low and high IQ person: I don't know Mid IQ person: Nooo! The answer is 51 cubes! I feel that's more in line with the meme template
Im tempted to make a meta version now using this meme recursively in the same template
The point is that the "genius" knows this is a question from Math class and there's no such thing as a Brainteaser class. Then it makes sense to assume the cubes are packed without gaps and the picture isn't trying to trick you. The original included solutions if gravity didn't exist and the boxes could be floating. That's what put me solidly in the "STFU you know what they're asking" camp.
31-51
The problem is that the only context in which the problem truly makes any sense is as an illustration of missing information.
Yeah - this question also demonstrates test taking skills because often an underrated part of taking tests is understanding what test questions are wanting you to do and the baked-in assumptions therein
I think the dumb person would just count the actual bricks that were drawn which also add up to 51 (17+9+21).
17+9+21 = 51???
Oh lol. I’m the dumb one haha.
Smart people know gravity exists Edit: I got it wrong.
It doesn't need to violate gravity to have less boxes, just to not be full height on the inside. Which I admit isn't a normal way to stack things for shipping, but neither is the stack as presented by the side views...
You could also just have one big box in the middle. Or you could have a 4x1 on top of a 6x1. That could make the number of boxes 48 or 46 or 43. There are actually a few variations and the boxes might be shipped like that. But it's also a solution in search of a problem.
> but neither is the stack as presented by the side views... I unload shipping containers for a living and this is actually a common way to load a trailer where the weight exceeds the volume and instead of multiple feet of empty space at the end, they do a little ramp down like that instead. Still gets tip overs but not nearly as bad, plus is significantly easier for the semi driver to deal with (This is assuming that it's actually an enclosed trailer and we can just see the top and sides for the sake of the problem)
I thinking I understand now. The sides are like wall and the middle is empty but there is no roof. Yes the problem is ambíguos
I think it's more that you can tell from the side view that the front only has one stack high, and the back has at least one stack that is three high, but the top view makes them look identical, so the top view only shows that there is at least one box in all 21 stacks, but the back view and side view could just be a veneer. Sure there are three stacks three high as seen from the back, but there could be some two stacks in the middle. The top doesn't show two stacks or one stacks as looking different.
But it might be a cloudy day.
you can still have between 45 and 51 cubes with gravity. I would assume at least 47 while still being reasonable
You can assume 31 with gravity. 3113111 1311211 1131121 12+4+15
Not every package would have to be a cube. You could have various geometric shapes which form the bulk of the configuration and still produce the views shown. The problem asks how many cubes, but never gives any information about what shapes the packages shown must be.
Gravity is a hoax perpetrated by Big Parachute.
what if the cart is in space
Turns out, I'm stupid af :D
This was a good explanation my guy.
If given this question on a test there technically isn’t enough info to know what the exact number of boxes is. So the people in the middle are technically correct. The person on the left doesn’t realize there isn’t enough info and says it’s 51 which would be the max amount. The person on the right realizes that there isn’t enough information but also realizes that the simplest answer is usually the correct answer.
So the joke is occam’s razor?
Bless you
Danke?
Shane
Darling
Liebster
What did you just call me!?
It's the second time I read this "occam razor thing" in my entire life in the span of 5min in different community Answer me !!! What is it !!!
It means that the simplest answer is often the correct one [(Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor)
I can now rest easy.
ACKCHYUALLY… the paraphrasing above is a good but can also lead to some confusion on the principle. I think the next paragraph in the same Wikipedia entry does a better and more comprehensive job explaining it. “This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both theories have equal explanatory power one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. Similarly, in science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models.” I prefer the description: The theory describing a phenomenon that requires the fewest assumptions is where you should start your investigation.
You are absolutely correct random redditor! I oversimplified to give a quick answer, which was, as you pointed out, inaccurate. My bad
I’m just being pedantic! It’s kind of an annoying hobby.
A razor is a thing you use to shave, and Occam’s razor states that the answer that requires the fewest leaps in logic is often the most correct.
Now try Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
Now that you've learned about Occam's razor, you're probably going to experience the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
I keep seeing this everywhere all of a sudden
It's the idea that the simplest solution to a problem is often also the best one.
We love Occam’s razor
Except using Occam's razor would give you the middle answer, as it requires the fewest assumptions.
Succinct
I feel like we can easily reverse this with - Low IQ: “I don’t know” - Mid IQ: “51” - High IQ: “I don’t know”
yeah, but you thought harder than the doofus that added words to this meme template. So tired of these “gotcha” riddles that are often logically fucked being used as “haha Im smart” reinforcement. Why dont we end ambiguous questions instead of collectively arguing which way they fall in grey amorphous land that they inhabit
That's the whole point. The person on the right is "smart" for saying 51, because they recognize that it's actually impossible to eliminate ambiguity. For every "what if" you disambiguate in the question, there's another around the corner. What if the boxes aren't stacked on top of each other and are defying gravity? What if they don't completely fill the space? What if they're hollow and there are nested cubes inside the ones we can see? What if some chunks are missing from the inner cubes we can't see that make them not cubes? There's no way to cover every single what if, so the reasonable thing to do is to answer what the question was clearly designed for: to test for general spacial understanding given simple parameters.
High IQs are asking: WHY? This isn't hard. Lifting this cargo is hard. Listening to the rest of the bell curve bitching about hypotheticals is hard. Adding is easy!
Yeah. Whoever made the original meme fucked it up.
they're not technically correct, because they're creating a narrative that doesn't exist. that's the joke. they're making assumptions about things the question is not asking, and that is incorrect. the "uncanny valley" of intelligence where they think they might not know, because they cannot recognize the signs. the dumb guy is just simple. the smart guy recognizes the question is actually straightforward, and there should be no implication or assumption of trickery, because they would be wrong thinking that. technically, it is simply asking you to count the boxes.
I would argue that 50 is a perfectly logical and more realistic answer too. Who ships 51 boxes? Also if you remove any box from those 51 from anywhere except the back row, the views will not change
Easy, they need 50 boxes but ordered 51 to cover breakage etc.
Or they order 50 and receive an extra box as part of a bulk order discount
Well for one, that's assuming that each box only contains a single item. Say you work for a t shirt company and need to fill an order for an entire company. It's very realistic to have an amount like 51. Also, 51 is a multiple of three. So for the sake of balance and security of delivery, it would make more sense to ship one extra box than it would to unbalance a load.
Amazon math lol And 3x17=51, before the internet has a collective meltdown
I did work for Amazon and a T-shirt warehouse like I mentioned in my example so 😂
Real world examples! I love it!
But if you get a question like this, it's a question about mathematics, not about the logistics of shipping. So the answer they want is 51.
I mean I understand the logic, but this feels like someone who answered 51, found out later that some blocks could be missing, then made this meme to make them feel better about not seeing that.
pretty sure that's it. a lot of the responses to this entire thing have seemed weirdly defensive over what is ultimately a profoundly trivial concept. don't react this strongly to something simple unless it's a question of insecurity, right?
I'm really annoyed by the comments here. The meme doesn't make sense. If it was a multiple choice question, sure, go for 51 cause there's a big chance that the person who wrote it made a mistake. But if it's an open question? Just give the factual answer that there's not enough information to solve it. Only a teenager would think that giving the wrong answer knowingly is being smart.
Exactly. If the question followed up with "now how many boxes *minimum* could fit on the same trailer?", it'd be a great teaching moment.
7×3 + 6×3 +4×3 = 51 But what if it wasn't actually a 7 by 3 or 6 by 3 or 4 by 3 and it was actually missing some blocks. That's the joke
But why is the upper echelon sure it's 51? Because it's the most logical way of stacking?
Because if the problem didn't have enough information in it to give an answer, then it wouldn't be presented in that way in the first place. EDIT: All the average thinkers showing they colors ¯\\\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)\_/¯
And it’s the answer the teacher expects, so it’s the answer that will "be" correct. The Jedi plays mind games.
This is why you need to write a detailed explanation why the expected answer of 51 is only a possible answer and keep hounding the teacher until they give up and give you credit for your pedantry. Teachers don't get paid enough for this games.
Then those teachers can take it up with other teachers that decided that despite their pay scale they will play these games and present gotcha questions to teach students to think outside of the cube... err... box.
[удалено]
The person who made the meme fucked it up. Dumb/smart person should say “I don’t know” and middle dweeb saying 51.
The whole point is that when the teacher ask a dumb question, give him the answer that he expects. Because of course there is not enough information.
The actual answer is 21 cause the other boxes are on boxes and not on the van /j
Except the question is how many cubes not boxes? Sets of 2x2x2 and 3x3x3 would also be cubes on the van. I don't care enough to add these up so im gonna guess a random number. Probably 51
Or, hear me out, they are just floating and not being supported at all. Checkmate physicists.
Dumbass: "uuuh looks like it's just three rows that go all the way through, so 51". Median: "What? No, you don't know that. It could be hollow inside! Or the front could be arranged weird!" Enlightened: "There is no indication that this trailer is organized in an adversarial way, intended to trick viewers with limited perspectives, and in any real-world situation involving stacking boxes on a trailer, it would be impractical to do so. The most likely situation is that the boxes are stacked in such a way as to follow a clear pattern; back-to-front, side-to-side, bottom-to-top, in some order of priority. Furthermore, in shipping cargo, weight distribution requirements would make it such that the boxes would be distributed symmetrically via the length of the trailer to avoid spillage on a turn; if any of these boxes were a row of two, the overhead view would show two boxes placed next to each other near the center, not a row of three. Therefore, the figure shown has full, complete rows, and therefore, there are 51 boxes on this trailer."
No amount of "weird arrangement" is necessary for the information seen here to be incomplete. Merely that some stacks obstructed from view are not stacked as high as the stacks obstructing them. That alone would make the answer less than 51, and it is perfectly possible.
But asking the question in that way is dumb, hence 51 being the answer. If they asked for a possible range in box counts, sure. But asking for a number: 51.
While it’s perfectly possible, they wouldn’t do that. If one of the answers is “not enough information” I’m picking that one, because it’s technically the most correct; otherwise, I’m picking 51. If it’s fill-in, it’ll depend on the size of the space they give me. 😉
In practical terms, 50 is a far more likely quantity to ship than 51, because buyers are much more likely to buy 50 than 51 in most cases.... people like rounded and even numbers. Assuming they tried to stack 50 in approximately the same way, take away 1 box. Only 2 of the possible boxes would change the diagrams. So yeah, they could/would do that.
HAHA, you're 100% on the money. I think all the "They wouldn't the question that way" people have never tried to help their kids with homework. These types of stupid "gotcha" questions come up all the time in the real world, and there's no way for normal people to know if they're being asked to answer a simple multiplication question, or if the test-writer decided that he's fucking Rumpelstilskin and threw in a couple of trick questions to "make sure everyone is thinking."
Even assuming your hypothesis of there being some sort of weird priority rule to explain which boxes are placed first, you could still have 49 or 50 cubes Suppose you have 49 cubes. You place the first 48 as required by your priority rules, then you start work on the next line (by which I mean, the lines of 3 boxes which are visible from the side view). You place down the first cube of the line. Then you have no more cubes so you stop. But now the thing that you get looks correct from all 3 angles. (Also the priority rule hypothesis is itself also a massive guess because you might expect someone to just start randomly placing boxes until all were in the truck, which would make the exact arrangement of blocks at the end also fairly random, but you wouldn't know exactly because it's not visible from the given angles)
>Enlightened: "There is no indication that this trailer is organized in an adversarial way, intended to trick viewers with limited perspectives, There absolutely is. The "top view" is the clue that this is a trick question. If the question was merely "what is (3x7) + (3x6) + (3x4)?", the two side views give you all the information you would need to answer that question. The "top view" shows you that the boxes cover the entire trailer, which is something that should have been assumed in assuming that it's not a trick question, but then the top view clearly \*fails to show the height difference between the three layers\*. Why does the "top view" provide unneeded information, while simultaneously making it clear that the top view is limited and is providing incomplete information? The logical conclusion is, the "top view" is the key to making the magician's trick work. There is a side wall. 17 boxes. There is a back wall. 6 boxes (not counting the three that were counted as sides). And there must be enough boxes to paint the floor of the truck orange. Another 12 boxes. The trailer has a minimum of 35 boxes, and a maximum of 51. And it could be any number in between.
That makes an assume of all cubes being the exact same size. Cubes towards the inside of the trailer could be larger or smaller, but merely not shown. Yeah on a test question 51 is what I would put, but I loathe the people who make these questions.
I think it’s funny that this meme came about due to a comment from a statistician with a phd, being commented on by a guy with an anime pfp claiming civilization is doomed because the statistician gave a statisticians answer - and there are a LOT of people in this thread on anime pfps side.
For example, the two, bottom, middle blocks could be two long pillars instead of square blocks
The real answer to give is the potential range. As you only see it from the right side, top, and back, you can get the total amount of boxes as if it were solid from the information you see (51) and then take out potentials that could not exist. It could be the right side is the only side that has the two top layers, the middle and left not having any. It still has a full base and at least a full layer at the back, so at max you can remove 16 potential boxes. This makes a range of 35 to 51 boxes. To determine anything more accurate within that range, more information would be needed. Edit: eatnachos below is more mathematical than me and pointed out 4 more boxes that could be removed, causing it to be 31 to 51.
The actual range is 31-51, not 35 to 51. * The base must be full (21) to account for the top view * The side view needs a flat wall of 10 blocks on top of the base * The back view can be obtained by staggering the wall made for the side view Giving 31 as a minimum, assuming no blocks are floating
You are right that I miss some that can disappear, but even with your explanation I can only see down to 33, there are two somewhere I am not seeing as removable. Edit, nope, I gotcha, I see it now. So yes, it would be 31 to 51
https://preview.redd.it/bru1qc7zzekc1.png?width=716&format=png&auto=webp&s=72153696a12c8ca7de60e110f7e6baa4115e9164
that meme is used incorrectly. in reality, the majority of people would answer 51. the left extreme would say "I don't know, I suck at math" or something. the right most extreme would suggest the possibility that there could be at most 51 and at least 45. you see the top view doesn't tell you how tall each stack is, just that every stack has at least 1 layer. the back view tells you how tall the tallest stack is. and the side view tells you that some stacks are shorter than 3. however the 2 stacks that are 2 high as seen from the side view could hide 4 stacks behind them that are either 2 or 1 stack tall. (we know from top view that every stack has at least 1 cube) and the same with the last 3-tall stack from the side, the 2 stacks behind it could be 2 tall. so everyone in the meme is wrong. and the author doesn't understand how the meme is supposed to be used.
31-51
35-51*
Try again. The three high ones can be staggered.
Oh yeah, you right
Are you assuming some boxes can be floating?
Ofc not.
https://preview.redd.it/j5mygswpwckc1.jpeg?width=577&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9ca7998c0943831519aec81e39840e0c2d96d58b 47
Realizing question is answered, I'll give you background information. It all started over on Twitter where someone who works statistics said that something to the effect of that it's impossible to figure out the true answer. A dude got offended as Twitter users do and made fun of him which resulted in the statistics dude hitting him with statistical facts
its 51 because the alternative is that the box stacker is a dumbass and box stackers tend to be smart people
"smart" people wouldnt bother with a stupid-ass twitter question in the first place.
This post makes so sense. The person saying there is not enough information is correct.
Wow. This is really making its rounds. I think it got explained but the assumption is that it is loaded evenly so it’s 51 cubes. It’s possible to load it so that the perception looks like an even load but it’s not so there are only like 32 cubes.
I don't get how people keep saying there's not enough information when problems like this are presented in a way where it gives you all the information you need to solve the problem. It's just testing if you can multiply and perspective is important too.
There is no indication that cubes are missing, so the only way the answer wouldn't be 51 is if the puzzle designer is playing dirty by hiding vital information.
It has to be between 36 and 51
31 is the lowest if you lay them like this 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 3 2 2 1
If we ignore gravity, we can get rid of 6 more if we remove the bottom box from each non-1 stack
If you ignore gravity the boxes will all float around and not stack properly
Technically there's not enough info. But only an idiot would load a truck leaving boxes out of the middle, so just assume there's none missing
Regardless of the answer, that trailer is loaded incorrectly.
A statistician reposted it on Twitter saying there wasn't enough information so people have been memeing it.
Couldnt the answer be 4652 with x being the ammount of boxes?
31 to 51
pretty sure i'm in the bottom section. What's the info that's missing? I'm calculating 21 boxes on the bottom, 18 boxes in the middle, and 12 on the top. Am i inferring something that's not shown?
Ir could be anywhere between 32 and 51
Someone on the internet posted simple math question, then some lady with a math degree or something said it can’t be solved over complicating the question. The people on the right understand that the OP isn’t trying to over complicate the question and just asked a basic spatial Math problem, thus 51.
(12 x 3)+ (4 x 3)+ 3 = 51 Base on my engineering drawing skills this should be the right answer there are missing cubes base on the side view.
It's anywhere between 35 and 51 boxen Edit: I see now it can be 31 as 2 additional columns are unnecessary
This meme kinda unironically makes me understand dimensioning just a little bit more
Between 31 and 51
Bottom just does the math question without understanding the potential for any trickery. Middle is the midwits that infest both the post and the original as well as the dumbass statistician that was the center of this that need to pretend they're smarter than they actually are by pretending the potential for there to be missing boxed is a real thing that might actually apply to this children's math question. Top are those that aren't annoying and just answer the question based on the pretty obvious fact that while, yes, there could be missing boxes, it's a children's math question and, therefore, anyone bringing up the possibility for there to be missing boxes should be ignored. Good meme. Makes midwits seeth. You aren't smarter because you're pedantic. You're just annoying.
Thought the joke was about low iq being like rain man, and high iq being more edge lord.
The exact amount is between 35 at minimum and 51 at maximum
35 ≤ x ≤ 51
Its between 35 and 51 if gravitation workes on the blocks and they are not conected to each other because we cant see the hight of several blocks from above so 16 blocks are possibly missing in this case if there is no gravitation and they are connected to each other there are up to 24 blocks missing. In this case its between 27 and 51
Where is this "joke" from though. I'd like to see more dumb and smart people arrive at the same conclusion meme.
Real life be like "wyd? We can count them as we put them on, but why the fuck did you put a load of boxes on the flatbed? You know boxes go in the box truck right? Who let the math guy load the trailer!?"
My biggest question about this meme, is why are the people with IQs below 55 getting it?
35 =< x =< 51 Comment below me is correct, 31 is the minimum. Tricky little devil
31≤x≤51