Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!vaxine!wjh12!genrad!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!sri-unix!Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA From: Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA Newsgroups: net.ai Subject: Commonsense Reasoning? Message-ID: <953@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Fri, 15-Jun-84 13:25:05 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.953 Posted: Fri Jun 15 13:25:05 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 20-Jun-84 00:42:06 EDT Lines: 23 From: Ken LawsI'm not sure whether the following probes our commonsense reasoning ability or simply demonstrates a quirk of natural language: "The Monday class will meet on Tuesday next week. The Wednesday class will thus be the day after the Monday class. (We may decide to hold the Friday class on Wednesday and the Wednesday class on Friday if everyone can make it then.)" Another example along the same line is: If 3 were half of 5, what would a third of 10 be? Although it's easy enough to finesse the problem by claiming that this is nonsense, most people would find the answer 4 to be quite reasonable. The answer is derived by following the chain 3:5/2 as 6:5 as 12:10 as 4:10/3, where ":" represents some unspecified transformation that is assumed to be linear. I consider this similar to the nonlinear Monday:Tuesday reasoning above. -- Ken Laws