I guarantee you almost all of Veeky Forums will get this wrong

You are a biologist traveling in the rainforest. You are bitten by a poisonous snake. Luckily, you know that the antidote for this poison is secreted by the female of a certain species of frog native to this rainforest. You remember that females and males of this species look exactly the same, and can only be distinguished by the distinctive croaking of the male. You also remember that the population is split evenly between females and males. Amazingly, you spot a frog of this species in front of you. At the same time you hear the distinctive croak of a male of the species behind you. You turn around and see two frogs where the croak came from. You are starting to fade out and only have enough time to run to the frog in front of you and lick it or to the frogs behind you and lick them. Which choice will maximize your chance of survival?

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It's 50/50 either way.

So you're saying there is a 50% chance of licking a female if you lick the lone frog? And a 50% chance if you lick the two frogs?

Wrong. Try again.

Hint: That would imply that males are as likely to not croak as females, which can't be true.

Luckily, the snake isn't venomous, so I'll be fine.

Nearly 100% chance that the croaker is a male. That leaves the other 2 as 50/50 each, meaning that other anons guess of 50/50 was reasonable.

You lick the one in front of you.
You being between the two behind you and the one in front of you I doubt they'd be croaking at you. And who knows those could be two males behind you about to fite 2 the death.
>also lol what if none of them were the one that croaked then go with the two behind you for max probabilities

>That leaves the other 2 as 50/50 each
Nope. Wrong.

Again, in order for a frog that was not heard to croak to have equal chance of being male or female, males would have to never croak. But we know they do croak.

Wrong, try again. Don't assume anything about the behavior of the frogs that was not mentioned in the question.

By
>That would imply that males are as likely to not croak as females, which can't be true.

I surmise you mean that there was a considerable probability that a male frog would croak on that situation.
With that in mind, you should probably lick the lone frog, as that yields a higher probability of licking a female.

Probability of licking a female from the group:

50%

Probability of licking a female by choosing the lone frog:

50% + (X/2)

X being the probability of a male frog croaking in said situation. The value of X is unknow, but it can safely be assumed to be higher than 0, since there is no such a thing as "negative croaking".

If we model croaking as a Poisson process with rate r, then in front
[math]P(no~croak|female) P(female) = 1 \cdot \frac12[/math]
[math]P(no~croak|male) = e^{-rt} \cdot \frac12[/math]
[math]P(female|no~croak) = e^{rt} / (1 + e^{rt})[/math]
whereas behind you
[math]P(1~croak|male+female) P(male+female) = rt e^{-rt} \cdot \frac12[/math]
[math]P(1~croak|2~males) P(2~males) = 2rt e^{-2rt} \cdot \frac14[/math]
[math]P(male+female|1~croak) = e^{rt} / (1 + e^{rt})[/math]
Not 50/50, but still a wash assuming we've been in hearing range of both sets of frogs for the same time.

Licking the lone frog would be your best bet.

Why would the male frog croak if it already had a mate in close proximity? This is assuming the croak is a mating call, which they usually are. Wouldn't that mean theres a greater chance that the frogs behind you are both male than the lone one being a male?

Also even if it isn't a mating call, if the males croak at any decent frequency the silence of the lone one would be an indication of it being female.

>I surmise you mean that there was a considerable probability that a male frog would croak on that situation.
Not necessarily. We know there is a *non-zero* probability since we heard a male frog croak. And we already knew that male frogs have a distinctive croak. There cannot be 0 chance a male frog will croak.

>With that in mind, you should probably lick the lone frog, as that yields a higher probability of licking a female.
Nope.

>Probability of licking a female from the group:
>50%
Why? Let's look at the possibilities. Since we only heard one croak:

M(croak) F(no croak)
M(croak) M(no croak)
M(no croak) M(croak)
F(no croak) M(croak)

So if we say that there is a 50% chance of there being a female in the group, this would mean that a non-croaking frog is as likely to be male as female. But we already know this is not true. So it can't be 50%.

Very good, congratulations.

>Why would the male frog croak if it already had a mate in close proximity?
See >Also even if it isn't a mating call, if the males croak at any decent frequency the silence of the lone one would be an indication of it being female.
Yes, and how does that not apply to the group which contains a frog which did not croak?

behind = 1/3 chance to survive
50/100 would do front again

Ooops. I screwed up pretty badly there.

So, to surmise it up:

Assuming X as the chance of a male frog croaking on said situation, the probability of getting specific licks from the frogs behind you are:

Male: [50+25-(X/4)]%
Female: [25+(X/4)]%

Therefore it can be certainly concluded that the probability of licking a male frog from the group is >50%(higher than 50%)


The probability of getting specific licks from the frog ahead of you is:

Male: [50-(X/2)]%
Female:[50+(X/2)]%

Therefore it can be certainly concluded that the probability of licking a male frog by choosing the lone frog is

Actually, as a biologist, I would gladly accept the fate of death by poison, to eliminate my cancerous genes from the human pool.

>you hear the distinctive croak of a male of the species behind you. You turn around and see two frogs where the croak came from.
>implying it was one of them whom croaked
gg no re you died from the confusion

>>>>>poisonous

OH MAH GAWD

kek, trips confirm that OP is a faggot

...

the one in front of you. the male behind you shouldnt need to croak if it's with a female already
but as aonon said, the snake was poisonous not venomous so you shouldnt even fret m8

>can only be distinguished by the distinctive croaking of the male.

> Don't assume anything about the behavior of the frogs that was not mentioned in the question

within the specific language of the question, which does NOT state that females do not croak, only that the males croak is "distinctive", you obviously lick the 2 frogs. I hope the question isn't about this dumb trick, but lets weed it out if it is

I would stop at my tracks, and ponder about this most interesting dilemma, until the poison slowly kills me

This. Then realise that I haven't left my basement for nearly 18months and that I probably his my head falling off the toilet.

With the frog in front of you there is a 1/2 chance that it will be female. The variables are changed when the two frogs from behind come. It's really 2/3s chance.

Either it is the wrong frog or the right one, so 50/50

I love this meme

I have no idea what you're doing, but it's wrong. Both probabilities are greater than 1/2 and are exactly the same.

>the male behind you shouldnt need to croak if it's with a female already
See

>which does NOT state that females do not croak
It states that males have a distinct croak AND you heard the distinct croak of the male behind you.So females croaking is irrelevant. Nowhere does it say you heard a female croak.

>With the frog in front of you there is a 1/2 chance that it will be female.
Wrong. If that were true then males would be as likely to give the distinct male croak as females, i.e. never. But we know they do.

I lick all of them because fuck you I'll lick the backs of every god damn frog in the Forrest

Finally some reason

This. The OP sets up the problem incorrectly by suggesting that you hesitate after seeing the first frog long enough to hear the other frogs. If you had been running to lick the first frog asap, you might still have time to turn around and lick the next two frogs as well.

>Amazingly, you spot a frog of this species in front of you. At the same time you hear the distinctive croak of a male of the species behind you.

>>The OP sets up the problem incorrectly by suggesting that you hesitate after seeing the first frog long enough to hear the other frogs.

>At the same time

>>you hesitate

can someone explain to me how this isn't 50/50 as if my iq was 90?

The chance of licking a female is the same, but not 50%. We know that males give a distinctive croak. So males sometimes croak, and females never give the croak. Thus if we observe a frog which doesn't croak while we are listening, there is a higher chance it is female. A female would not be croaking 100% of the time. A male would not be croaking only sometimes.

And the longer we wait, the higher the chances that the frog is female.
The probability that it's a female would increase over time as prob = 0.5 (1 + (1-x)^t), where t is the number of arbitrary time periods passed and x is the probability of the male frog croaking during the arbitrary time period (note that the arbitrary time period tends to 0)
You could probably integrate this but i'm too lazy to.

Wait, fuck, make that 0.5 * (2-(1-x)^t)

Plot twist: you turn to the left and see a goat. The probability is now 2/3.

Lick the frog in front and blast off into a psychedelic world

they're all males kek

broke the game

I LOVE YOU

It's 50/50, things either happen or they don't.

The trick is that

1. You don't know which frog behind you croaked
2. Just because one frog croaked the other one might still be male

I would have said the same but I'm starting to "fade out" so I'm probably hungry so I eat a frog. Since the snake is poisonous I'm not gonna eat that.

Two frogs behind. More likely for both a male and female frog together. Male frogs won't be next to each other due to competition of food resources.

Lick all the frogs. There is apparently no danger to accidentally licking a male frog. Depending on how much tine you have, go for the two frogs since they are near each other.

Biological engineer here. I'll suck the male frog's dick, because surely some of the female's antidote will still be on it.

In front.

If I pick a frog from behind, I've got a 50/50 shot of picking the one that croaked vs the one that didn't. The one that didn't croak has a 50/50 shot of being male anyway. So I've only got a 25% chance of picking a female.

In front, though, I have an even chance of the frog being M or F, so I have a 50% chance of licking a female.

We are presented with two options.

1. Lick frog in front of you

2. Lick BOTH frogs behind you. "or [run] to the frogs behind you and lick them.

So what we must determine is the probability of finding a female frog in one of these options.

Option 1: The probability is easy to determine. The frogs are 50/50 male/female. Because the frog did not croak we can't rule out that it is female so the possible sexes look like this.

Option 1:
M
F

Or 50% chance of female.

Option two is different. With two frogs our options look like this.

Option 2:
M M
M F
F M
(F F)*

*However we heard a croak from behind us so one of these frogs must be male.

Therefore

Option 2
M M
M F
F M

2/3 of these options contain a female frog. If we lick both frogs then our chances of survival are 2/3 or 66%

In summary:
Option 1: 50% chance of survival
Option 2: 66% chance of survival
Go to the two frogs behind you and lick them both.

You would die either way, because snakes aren't poisonous, the are venomous.

Also to ruin the fun for everyone, the answer is go to the two frogs. There's a TED ED about it: youtube.com/watch?v=cpwSGsb-rTs

Going to the first frog you saw.

Either M or F so 50/50

Going to the other frogs, then the possibilities are

MM
FM
MF

We rule out FF because we know at least one of the frogs is M.

Now, assuming that you have time to lick both then 2/3 of the possibilities let you live so 66.67%

Therefore you should go to the two frogs behind you.

Why the fuck are you autistic retards over complicating this by making assumptions which aren't present in the question?

You hear one frog croak and know it's a male. You can immediately discount that frog. But you lick both frogs behind you anyway, knowing one of them is a male (but not which one). So there's a 50/50 chance of the non-croaking frog behind you being a female and there's a 50/50 chance of the non-croaking frog in front of you being a female. Anyone who says anything different to try and sound clever is making assumptions which can't be validated from the information in the question and aren't valid as, for there to be any point to asking the question, the hypothetical action you take (your answer) has to be decided purely on the parameters of the hypothetical scenario.Otherwise we're all answering a different (our own) question.

This is pretty close, but...
>the population is split evenly between females and males
Since at least of of the two frogs behind you is male, the set of all other frogs is slightly more than 50% female.

>poisonous snake

TOP KEK.

Snake is VENOMOUS.

Frog is POISONOUS.

M F and
F M

are the same option in this case. It is better to partition the phase space into

One of the frogs is Male
Both of the frogs are Male

Both of which have equal probability (assuming croaking rate of males and females is the same). So it is 50% chance of survival in turning around.

The original question was vague/misleading as we were not told that female frogs don't croak/croak less, only that the male croak is "distinct." In assuming that both genders croak at an equal rate, the answer is 50/50.

>1. You don't know which frog behind you croaked
This doesn't actually change anything. You know one and only one frog croaked, so it's not like the boy girl paradox.

You didn't get the problem at all.

>You know one and only one frog croaked
just because only one croaked doesn't mean the other isn't also capable of croaking

I said you can lick both frogs behind you.

The frog which didn't croak cannot have a 1/2 chance of being male because that would imply males are as likely to not croak as females, i.e. never. But we know males croak. The same is true for the frog in front which did not croak. It has a higher chance of being female.

So everything you just wrote is wrong.

You made the same mistake as everyone else. You ignored that not croaking increases the chance of being female.

The TED video is wrong though. I emailed the guy who made it abd he said he will debutant correct it.

Wrong. Read the thread.

Wrong. Try again.

top lel

O U T P L A Y E D

trips as well

>You turn around and see two frogs where the croak came from.
That usually takes time, user. That's called hesitation. You turned around because of the sound of a male frog that you already know is useless to see if there were more. Should have been running to lick frog already, and turning around to investigate after.

If you actually read the question I clearly state that you heard the distinct male croak. I never stated you heard any other croaking, nor would it affect the problem if you did!

I would lick the lone frog. A male croaking behind you could mean that there are two males tryinv to get the lone frogs attention.

Monty hall, anyone?

Yes, and how does that respond to what I said?

It has nothing to do with Monty hall.

>do you stick with what you have, or go switch to a group with one of the options revealed?

The question says if I switch, i get to lick both frogs.

So because your lamp has a switch it must also be the Monty Hall problem.

Lick the two frogs behind you because 1 out of 2 frogs are female by probability as stated in the question.

Or you know you could just whip out your cell phone and call for help or something.

Frog in front - 50% chance of being female
Frog that didn't croak behind - 50% chance of being female

I know you like to find new ways to suck dick, but what makes you so sure it isn't a touchless wizard frog engineerbro?

Lamps have determined outcomes, idiot.

If monty hall hosted his show in the rainforest and instead of a new car, you got an antitoxin for a snake bite, it would be the exact scenario.

No you fucking autist. For knew you don't understand an analogy. Second it is not even closely related to Monty Hall. There is no difference in survival rate between the two frogs and the line frog.

Nope. Try again.

This is just a variant of the Monty Hall problem.

It's not.

So far I count only two correct answers out of 28 substantive responses. As I predicted, almost no one got the answer correct.

Well anyway. I'm going to give you the "wrong" answer by saying, in realistic and functional terms, it's 50/50. I view the vast majority of statistical applications as based around faith when applied naively, and they're almost always shown as such when compared to real world outcomes and conditions. You might think choosing the lone frog drops your odds to 50% or whatever, while choosing the set is 75, but that's gibberish at best. You don't know anything about this species, their distribution, their group / social structures.

Instead I'd probably place my faith in the machinery of intuition, and choose the two frogs behind me. Just because it'd be grand to die rejecting salvation that appeared literally right in front of you. Human history in a nutshell.

>Well anyway. I'm going to give you the "wrong" answer by saying, in realistic and functional terms, it's 50/50
No. For example, let's say the probability of a male frog croaking in the amount of time you were listening is 1. Then a frog which didn't croak while you were listening must be female. Therefore the chance of survival is 1, since if you lick the lone frog you must be licking a female. And if you lick the group of two, the frog which you didn't hear croak must be female.

If the chance that the frog which you did not hear croak is female is 1/2, then this implies that females are as likely to not croak as males. But since we already heard a male croak, we know this is false. So the probability CANNOT be 1/2.

>You might think choosing the lone frog drops your odds to 50% or whatever, while choosing the set is 75, but that's gibberish at best.
Of course it's gibberish. It also has nothing to do with the answer to the question I asked.

>You don't know anything about this species, their distribution, their group / social structures.
You know what I said you know. Nothing more, nothing less.

Too many embedded assumptions about the nature of these frogs (machines). No offense, but I came to this thread thinking there might be something clever and interesting.

ie:
>You know what I said you know. Nothing more, nothing less.
Then we aren't going to do this:
>let's say the probability of a male frog croaking in the amount of time you were listening is 1.
And the rest falls away as a result.

> you turn around and see two frogs where the croak came from.
Now the single frog is behind you and the two are in front of you.
> you have time enough to run to the frog in front of you
You are hallucinating by now. There are now two frogs in front of you. Turn around an lick the lone frog so you don't fuck up. Believing there is currently one in front of you is wrong.

>Too many embedded assumptions about the nature of these frogs (machines)
Like what? I have not assumed anything which does not directly follow from what I stated in the problem. You simply did not think about what it means for a frog to not be heard croaking. You assumed the chance was 1/2, and you were wrong. Now you seem to be blaming the question instead of accepting you made a mistake.

>Then we aren't going to do this:
It was simply an example to show how you could be wrong. I also proved the answer could not be 1/2. But you ignored that.

There are several unintuitive things going on in this problem. For one, the question asks for which choice maximizes survival, which leads many to assume that one choice is better than the other when they are in fact the same. It also leads many to assume that there is a single value instead of a range of probabilities dependent on the chance of a male frog croaking. People assume that there is an easy answer instead of actually trying to solve the problem. Some people confuse this problem with the boy girl paradox because it sounds similar, and thus conclude that the two frogs give a higher chance of survival than the lone one. You seemed to expect this by writing that I thought the group of two had a 2/3 chance of containing a female. But mostly, people just get the wrong answer because they don't understand conditional probability, and don't realize that a lack of croaking can be informative in the same way croaking is.

Yes, they are the same. Each frog as far as you know, has a 50% chance of being female. No matter your choice, it's still 50%. Instead of thinking about what I said, you just anchored on what you already had in mind.

I didn't say 2/3, I said 75%. Which was mocking the idea of probability naively weighted by sample size.

Now that I think of it. You turn around and see two frogs. Perhaps that is a hallucination, or at least there's a chance of a hallucination. There may only be one frog on either side of you. But you know you heard a croak behind you originally. If you hallucinate and see double, then the chance of only males behind you is 100%. If you hallucinated, your only chance is to lick the quiet frog.

>your only chance is to lick the quiet frog.
This made me laugh for some reason.

guys
listen guys...
h-h-.. guys
hold m-my beer
guys
...
I-I got this

>Each frog as far as you know, has a 50% chance of being female.
No, as I already said, that's impossible. Either the frog croaked or it didn't. If it did, you know it is male. If it did not, it must be more likely to be male than female, as males sometimes croak but females never croak. If one of two frogs croaked then there are four possibilities:

M(croaked), F
M(croaked), M(didn't croak)
M(didn't croak), M(croaked)
F, M(croaked)

Due to symmetry, this is equivalent to the case of a single frog which did not croak, which again cannot have a 1/2 chance of being male.

As already stated, too many embedded assumptions about the nature of these frogs (machines). You don't know anything about what it is for one to croak, you don't know anything about if context or environment potentiates croaking, you don't know how the tendency to croak is distributed across the population as a whole and if there is any useful clustering.

For all you know the probability a male will croak around females is higher, the probability to croak immediately after another male is higher or lower. You know nothing. This is why it falls to intuition.

Although it's worth noting, a good deal of venoms are rapid sodium channel blockers. Comparatively few even need to cross the BBB. I do like the trippy scene of being on the brink of death and having three frogs appear. One lone frog, and one group of two. Singular and dual. Neat contrast, sense of balance through lack thereof.

Well inspired.

>As already stated, too many embedded assumptions about the nature of these frogs (machines).
And then I asked what assumptions there were. And you ignored the question.

>You don't know anything about what it is for one to croak, you don't know anything about if context or environment potentiates croaking,
You know what the problem says you know. That's it. If you want to answer a different problem then this is not the thread for you. If you want to answer the question I asked, then go ahead.

>For all you know the probability a male will croak around females is higher, the probability to croak immediately after another male is higher or lower.
I never said that it does, so it doesn't.

>This is why it falls to intuition.
Your intuition couldn't even give you basic insight into the problem. I'm still waiting for an explanation of how males would be as likely to not croak as females when we already know the croak is distinct to males. You keep avoiding the point with equivocations.