[Bill Vermillion]

In article ,
Laurence Payne NOSPAMlpayne1ATdsl.pipex.com wrote:
On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:15:27 -0500, Tobiah wrote:

As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits: kits, cats, sacks and wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?


There is not enough information to say, and it
could be zero, given that 'I' am none of kits, cats,
sacks, and wives.

And why should you be?

The usual glib answer is "one", assuming the others were coming FROM
St. Ives. But this is not necessarily implied by "met". You might
have overtaken them, they might have joined you from another path.

There's another one: "If it takes a man a day to dig a hole, how long
does it take two men to dig half a hole?" Glib answer: "There's no
such thing as half a hole!". But, by the terms of the question,
there is.

Lesser examples of this sort of ambiguity turn up all the time in the
box-ticking type of test. It's very unfair to the deeper-thinking
student.

Which brings up the question "Can you teach a man-eating tiger
to bite women" [Ernie Kovacs - circa 1958]

Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com