I've tried various google and math.SE search strings but I'm having trouble formulating a query that gives me relevant information.
Questions
- Does this table below accurately represent an acceptable answer to this question, (Drinking_Habits_Riddle), if the answer is stated with "100% of the people of said village drink some form of alcohol (assuming that the whiskey and gin are both alcoholic)"?
- Or would it strictly require a numeric symbol translation to be acceptable?
- If so how would it be derived directly from the graph alone ?
- Or could it be that any correct answer be derivable from the table itself but it still needed to be in a numeric format ?
Perhaps I could have said something along the lines of "As is evident by this graph which holds strictly to the correct ratios of Tea:Coffee:Whiskey:Gin that there are no gaps where any percent of people drink no alcohol in this village and no percent of people drink all four beverages. Therefore 100% of the population drinks some form of alcohol." But even if the previous is True I guess that's more a logic answer.. but would that also be unacceptable/irrelevant?
In a small village 90% of the people drink Tea, 80% Coffee, 70% Whiskey and 60% Gin. Nobody drinks all four beverages. What percentage of people of this village drinks alcohol?
Table:
T C W G
1 + + + -
2 + + + -
3 + + + -
4 + + + -
5 + + - +
6 + + - +
7 + + - +
8 + - + +
9 + - + +
10 - + + +
where T == Tea
C == Coffee
W == Whiskey
G == Gin
Extra if helpful
I was excited when I saw this question on stackoverflow as I'm better at understanding patterns and ratios then using symbolic notation manipulation. The table was part of my first answer on math.SE, but got several down-votes. I had added that "it seems any multiples of 10 are true as well" but didn't give proof of said statement. I admit perhaps my choice of words in several places seem to suggest I wasn't being purely mathematical, id est, that it could have seen to have been just a guess. I was told to delete it for it wasn't mathematics. I've since deleted the post after understanding that I didn't show proof of the 'multiples' but I never got an answer from anyone who was against my answer if the (table and accompanying statement) themselves, by themselves, was unacceptable. In either event if I happen to answer anymore questions I'll be sure to only state things I can prove to be true.
For a formal education setting I only have a GED so I apologize if this isn't my place. I have a rough time at judging delimitations of acceptance, and in choosing tone of formal:casual:readable.
Lastly, if this isn't the site for this sort of question please let me know. Maybe it could belong on meta.SE, Quora, or other? As this site is for mathematics I assumed asking here would be acceptable.
In advance thank you for any input
Best Answer
Your table can be part of an answer -- namely, it shows that it is possible for everyone to be alcohol drinkers, given the provided information.
However, for a full answer you would also need some kind of argument that this is the only possible situation. (In some situations you might get away with claiming that whoever asked the question wouldn't have asked it that way unless they knew there was a unique result, so you don't need to be sure that is the case. But this is not usually considered satisfactory as a mathematical treatment of the question).
What you need for this other part is not -- as you seem to assume -- more numbers and symbols, but actual words that explain how the reader would convince themselves there is not any solution with less than 100% alcohol drinkers.
(Some people somehow get the idea that the fewer actual English words they use in their writing, the more impeccably mathematical will it be. They then leave out all of the explanations and produce just an impenetrable mess of formulas. This is exactly wrong).