A Riddle for Parents, Courtesy of “Freakonomics”
As you can see if you look far enough down my sidebar, I’m currently reading (well, listening to) 
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. It’s a pretty fascinating book, and the following riddle for parents will explain why. Give me your answers to the two questions I pose, and then, in a later post, I’ll give you the correct answers.
You have been blessed with a 6-year-old daughter, who has entered first grade and made two best friends, Paula Poole and Gwen Gunn. They both seem like nice little girls, and they both have invited your daughter over to play for several hours on a Saturday. Being the good parent that you are, concerned for your child’s well-being and physical safety, you decide to get to know the parents and the situations a little better before you sign off on this expedition, and so you make connections with both the Gunns and the Pooles. They both seem like fine families; you have no qualms there. You are delighted to hear that the Poole family has a nice in-ground swimming pool in the backyard, and you can envision your daughter having a great time there. You are distressed, though, to learn that the Gunn family, great as they seem, keep a loaded gun in the house. Saturday is approaching, and all other things are equal. Thus, you have to make a choice as to which is the safer place for your daughter to spend a few hours. Where do you send your daughter, to the Gunns or to the Pooles?
Question two: you decide that you want to be an “equal-opportunity risk-taker”, and thus you will send your daughter to play at each house, but you will send her to each house a proportional number of times based upon the risk involved with each on the basis of those two factors alone. How many times do you send her to the “safer” house (identified by your answer above) before you send her once to the “more risky” house?
Let’s have a little fun, and no cheating if you’ve read the book.
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
2 Responses to “A Riddle for Parents, Courtesy of “Freakonomics””
Alright, I’ll bite.
(In order to not squelch the fun of this, I have removed PART of Hefe’s comment here. Thanks, Hefe, but the words I’ve removed here constituted “semi-cheating”, so to keep this fun, I’ve removed them.)
I’ll send my children to the Gunns. I’ll assume at least that the loaded weapon isn’t in the toy chest or on the coffee table, but reasonably locked away. I’d also send them to the Pooles, but I’m going too to, uh…”supervise” the swimming activities.
Hefe ~ Apr 14, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Okay here is my take. First we visit the Pooles and have a swim and meet since I know my daughter is a good swimmer. We go together the first time so I can check out the male population of the household where my daughter will be in her bathing suit. This also gives me a chance to make sure that the pool is germfree and well chlorinated.
Next we invite the Gunns over to our house. That way no ones feelings are hurt and there is no lead in anyones body unexpectedly.
Carolina Mom ~ Apr 15, 2006 at 10:37 pm