Foo - Critical Thinking Quiz #4

You are playing russian roulette. That is the game where you put on bullet in a chamber of a 6 shooter gun, spin the barrel and put the gun to your head and hope you didn't get the chamber with the bullet. Typically you play with two people where each does this until someone dies.

One bullet is put in the 6-chamber gun.

Ok, the other person goes first puts the gun to their head and pulls the trigger. *click* No bullet.

Your turn. You have the option of spinning the barrel again or not spinning it.

Do you spin or not? Why?

You should spin it, right? If you don't spin it you have a 1/5 chance, but if you spin it your chance is back to 1/6.

You spin it to improve your chances of not dying. If you don't spin it, your chances are decreased to 1 in 5 instead of 1 in 6.

Definatly spin. It'll give me 1 in 6 chance vs. a 1 in 5 of shooting myself in the head.

If you spin you have a 5/6 chance of an empty chamber. If you don't spin you have a 4/5 chance of an empty chamber.

to spin, or not to spin...

I wouldn't play. :rolleyes:

My question is, did people really do this?

My question is, did people really do this?
Yes, they do. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077416/)


Heehee....all of you are missing one VERY IMPORTANT piece of the puzzle. ;)

are they candy bullets?

are they candy bullets?
Uh...yeah....sure...candy bullets coming at your head at 1200 ft/s. :rolleyes:

Reading that is hurting my head because of the typos :-/

I'd spin. But I wouldn't play either!

Sad day...couple guys in my high school were messing around and they had his dad's gun. They played that game because they saw it in a movie...don't know which one. Anyway. The first boy to go spun the chamber and got the bullet on the first squeeze. Tragic. He died of course. Niether one of them had plans on commiting suicide...but it happened. I was a senior in high school, this boy who died was two years behind me so I didn't know him.

Reading that is hurting my head because of the typos :-/

OK, I fixed the ONE WORD that was no spelled correctly. *geesh*....people get annoyed because they can't figure it out....so try to make you look bad other ways.

I'd spin. But I wouldn't play either!

Sad day...couple guys in my high school were messing around and they had his dad's gun. They played that game because they saw it in a movie...don't know which one. Anyway. The first boy to go spun the chamber and got the bullet on the first squeeze. Tragic. He died of course. Niether one of them had plans on commiting suicide...but it happened. I was a senior in high school, this boy who died was two years behind me so I didn't know him.

Wow. I ummm, am speechless. I'm guessing they either did not hit probability in mathematics or slept through it. :S That is just sad!

OK, I fixed the ONE WORD that was no spelled correctly. *geesh*....people get annoyed because they can't figure it out....so try to make you look bad other ways.
:p

I think didn't should be don't . And I probably won't get it because I know nothing about guns, but it still made my head hurt while reading it :p

Hypothetically speaking, if I were to play without spinning, the bullet would be in one of the five remaining chambers. If I were to play and spin the barrel, the odds would be back to the bullet being in any one of six chambers. Either way, the possibility of the bullet being in the next chamber would relatively be the same.

I wouldn't play.

Heehee....all of you are missing one VERY IMPORTANT piece of the puzzle. ;)


Does it have to do with whether or not the gun automatically advances to the next chamber?

Does it have to do with whether or not the gun automatically advances to the next chamber?
Isn't that kind of assumed? What else would the chamber do? Of course it advances to the next chamber.

Oh....and you are thinking along the right direction. :D

Like looking first? In all such guns you can see at least 4 of the chambers. So you can see if you would die as the gun is. If the next chamber has the bullet you spin and have a 1/6 chance otherwise you do not and live for at least one more round.

But of course if you are playing this game doing this defeats the whole reason for playing.

Interesting. I guess the devil is in the details. I've always assumed Russian Roulette is played with blanks, specifically so that method would not work.

Spin it back to the previous chamber. You know nothing's coming out of it regardless of whether or not your friend is still alive. Of course, if he's dead, you can keep playing all day long with pretty good odds, unless you feel the need to reload. The only way to get stupider about it is to play with a clip-fed pistol

An older cousin of someone I knew in grade school did this and survived. The bullet missed his brain stem by very little, but I think still got part of the back of his brain.

Isn't that kind of assumed? What else would the chamber do? Of course it advances to the next chamber.

Oh....and you are thinking along the right direction. :D

I dunno. I would assume it. I'm pretty gun illiterate though. If you're getting into the differences between single action vs. double-action, its above my head.

you can spin it to the previous chamber?

Interesting. I guess the devil is in the details. I've always assumed Russian Roulette is played with blanks, specifically so that method would not work.


Blanks can kill, too. Remember the television actor, goofing around, who killed himself with blanks?

Interesting. I guess the devil is in the details. I've always assumed Russian Roulette is played with blanks, specifically so that method would not work.
Nope....you all are overthinking it and trying to get caught up in details.

This is just like the previous "critical thinking quizzes"....it's kind of a probability problem. Nothing fancy.....but you have to think (that's why its a "critical thinking" quiz). Use your powers of deduction!!!

Uh...yeah....sure...candy bullets coming at your head at 1200 ft/s. :rolleyes:
what type of handgun is this? a magnum? and what type of candy?

I deduce that my brain hurts and that Russian Roulette is silly :p

Blanks can kill, too. Remember the television actor, goofing around, who killed himself with blanks?
No I don't . How the heck do you kill yourself with a blank? Can it even propel itself forward?

It still expels a lot of gas, so if you're right next to the muzzle you're going to get hit by it. It has a lot of force concentrated on one small area.

The blank contains the actual gas?

indeedy, but no bullet.

"gun fires"
the bullet is in the other guys head

:D

"gun fires"
. *click* the bullet is gone.....
need more help?
:D
*click* is the sound of no bullet escaping the gun, dingleberry.

but the gun fires!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

haha dingleberry :P thats a harsh word :(

but the gun fires!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok ....I changed the wording to "pulls the trigger". Now nobody can be confused.

*click* is the sound of no bullet escaping the gun, dingleberry.
If you didn't stick your nose in other people asses, you wouldn't have them up your nose, u*****assmothafaka

Ok ....I changed the wording to "pulls the trigger". Now nobody can be confused.
what an idiot :rolleyes:

Blanks can kill, too. Remember the television actor, goofing around, who killed himself with blanks?

I recall a hill street blues episode where a cop tries to off himself, but a coworker suspected he would do that & put blanks in; the 'victim' (perp?) got away with powder burns. But thats fiction, which may or may not be based on reality. Other one I can think of is Brandon Lee, who died during filming of The Crow when he was hit with a wad from a blank during a shoot-em-up scene.

what an idiot :rolleyes:
Ok, dingleberry.

first, you can't spell
second, you can't formulate questions
third, you call people names while you call yourself a king...i'm done with this thread :)

i'm done with this thread :)
Good. :)

What's a dingleberry?

What's a dingleberry?
Just a light hearted way of calling somebody something like "silly" because they didn't see something everybody else saw. I don't want to say stupid because its not meant to be offensive or anything.

Of course....the person did respond by calling me an idiot, so maybe they took it more offensive than it was intended....just meant to be like saying "silly" or something.

They said they won't come back to the thread.....I'll try not to lose sleep over it. :rolleyes:

I was wondering if dingleberry came from that Wyatt Earp movie... I'm your Dingleberry :p

I was wondering if dingleberry came from that Wyatt Earp movie... I'm your Dingleberry :p
Close..., but that was huckleberry. :D

I thought a dingleberry was one of those fuzzy balls used as decoration in low-riders (cars, not bikes). Like the ones that hang from the brim of a hat, if you're into that sort of thing.

There is no right answer.

Reason is the "loser" is determined based on spin.

Yes, there is a 1/5 odd of getting it, but when you spin, what looks like a 1/6 odds may in fact be a guaranteed Hearse ride.

It's purely odds, it all varies on the actual outcome within the gun, not outside of the true odds. That is why most people will spin the cylinder.

Honestly, if I was to play, I would go for just firing it and handing it off. If I did survive, the show of bravado may intimidate the other into not spinning so as to not look like a wuss, in which point there is a good chance of it being that shot....then you spin after him.



Point is, you never want to spin if your odds are greater than around 75% or greater...but if it's around 66% or lower, it would be more likely to get a better spin. Spinning after every round would in theory provide a wider range of "bad" spins than just taking your chance and hoping hte spin at hand is good until it has been fired twice, at which point, you have a chance for up to a 33% improvement (25% for two shots on an 8-shot pistol, but I would wait for the third shot in that case, to again assure the most consistant odds possible).

Nobody's "probability math" has been correct yet.

*HINT*

All the "probablity math" everyone has used so far considered the events as independant of one another. Are you sure that is the case?

Probability if you respin of getting the bullet is 1/6
Probability of getting the bullet if you don't spin is 5/6 * 1/5 = 1/6

By not spinning, the probability of the bullet being in your chamber includes the probability of the first spin not being it.

It makes no difference, you ultimately have a 50/50 chance of biting it assuming they keep you going at it.

Is that right? To be honest, my initial answer would have been spin because it's 1/6 instead of 1/5, but since you insist that's wrong, how 'bout my lamo attempt above?