Talk:Potato paradox

Citation *Not* Needed
Over the last few weeks I've seen a rash - worse than syphillis - of "Citation needed" against statements made in wikipedia articles. The latest is the one against the remark in this article, "An explanation via algebra is as follows".

No citation is needed for this remark. The explanation, which is a piece of algebra, is right there in the article. The sentence is not a claim, still less an unsourced claim. Nor is it poorly sourced or unreliable or in any other way vulnerable to challenge. The "Citiation needed" tag is there to be used against claims that might reasonably be challenged and nobody is going to challenge that remark.

Please remove this (frankly laughable) request for a citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.45.192.9 (talk) 08:35, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

... and now removed, together with a tidy up of the explanation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.45.192.9 (talk) 20:42, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Citation useless
Besides, the three citations are neither scientifically good citations, nor are they giving any more information and might as well be removed. Better would be if the orignal author would be named — Preceding unsigned comment added by Triple5 (talk • contribs) 20:23, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

The paradox takes advantage of reasonable expectations
One contributing factor to the potato paradox illusion is that the problem starts with the premise that the potatoes are 99% water weight. This in itself is a false premise. In the real world, reducing the water weight of 100 lbs of potatoes by 1% reduces the total weight of the potatoes by under 5 lbs (going off a typical potato being about 80% water weight). A person thinking about the problem would likely imagine actual potatoes (regardless of whether he/she is aware of their water weight), and is more likely to produce a reasonable estimate of the weight loss for real world potatoes. The answer to the potato paradox subverts expectations because the problem uses invented numbers. In reality, the average person's guess at the answer would not be "too far off" from correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slashtap3 (talk • contribs) 02:00, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I had this problem first described to me using cucumbers instead of potatoes, which is more realistic. -- 89.245.81.192 (talk) 00:15, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think you're correct. The problem does not involve 'reducing the water weight of 100 lbs of potatoes by 1%', as you say. It involves reducing the ratio of water weight to non-water weight from 99:1 to 98:2, which is exactly the same ratio as 49:1. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.125.173.135 (talk) 05:25, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

This question would be made much more clear if the question stated that the potatoes were left outside so that some of the water could evaporate, leaving the non-water portion unaffected. The explanations all seem to assume it's a given that the 1 kg of non-water material remains 1 kg. I'm no expert on what happens to purely mathematical potatoes when you leave them out overnight, so in my opinion the original author of the problem took as interesting counterintuitive math problem and just stated it vaguely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:79B1:A040:D93D:1261:D689:9D6C (talk) 00:11, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Not a paradox
I don’t see how this math problem meets the definition of “paradox”. True the answer is not obvious, but it is mathmatically sound and doesn’t contradict itself. This page should be renamed to Potato problem or similar. Opinions? --Zojj tc 02:11, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It's one other case not without some similarity to other supposed paradoxes, often in statistics. In statistics quite often a given set of results may appear paradoxical, yet it is a direct effect of the mathematical pattern applied to the input data. Thus that result should be considered as a matter internal to its mathematical field of origin. On the other hand paradoxes are always solvable by opposing them one or another given flaw of intuitive logic (imo). But the current case is explicitly argued to be a veridical paradox, so it seems that might be it. To be entirely sincere, I don't see clearly a match with veridicality. I tend rather to see the assertion following which it's veridical as veridical itself. But that, in sticking to the veridicality article, not in sticking to the veridical paradox paragraph. --Askedonty (talk) 10:08, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Agreed, I see that might be as veridical are asserting to be in statistical, yet is argued to it. To be clear, in statistical veridicality it is a explicit singular case not with a veridical paradox, so it is explicitly singular due to its mathmstics. I see the flaw that it in seems profound when not without data. To be entirely similar and appear paradoxical, some senblance to other insights supposedly to matched is one to consider, and not the one other in the set of verdical. --Zojj tc 03:50, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I may be wrong but I think there is something in your premices nonetheless. The Description paragraph is curiously articaulated and it's leaving it to appear as if the subject is a problem instead of a paradox. --Askedonty (talk) 20:46, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Gluck Theory?
I am not aware of such a mathematical theory. A google search for "Gluck theory" yields nothing relating to mathematics, and "Gluck theory mathematics" yields results relating to much higher level mathematics that the "potato paradox".

I suggest we delete the notion of "Gluck theory" and simply change it to "another method" or something similar.

The correct algorithm for the Potato Paradox
x=percent y=weight of potatoes 1 + 99x = y

Simple explanations on main page
The third explanation is actually wrong in my opinion. I am a math minor. Reasoning is thus. The answer x = 50 is derived without using the original weight anywhere in the equation. Thus it is actually a factor or percentage that has been calculated and is unit less. Let us examine all the variables used in the process to derive the answer.

(1-.98)x = 1 (1 :: this is the percentage of starting weight or 100% no units - .98 :: this is the reduction of weight and is a percentage and has no units x :: I claim this is the resulting factor of reduction = 1 :: this is a unitless item and is 100%

nowhere in the equation is 100kg used.

Method 1 is actually doing something similiar but by explicitly using (98/100)x we can assume that this is in kg even though is it is also could be a %. But unfortunately it is incorrect as well. Both method 1 and 3 fail if the initial weight changes -- so they cannot be a correct method for evaluating the answer. Change the initial weight to 250. The answer should then be 175.
 * In both of these explanations, the 1 on the right-hand side is in fact the non-water weight of 1 kg. Changig this to 2.5 gives the correct answer of 125 kg. However, I removed most of the text because it is OR and was just repeating nearly identical methods. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 20:23, 2 October 2022 (UTC)