…aaaannnndd… I didn’t notice until just now that this thread has a second page, and other people have already given similar answers. It’s been a long day. :o
Label the dice with indecipherable symbols. Claim to be the only one who can interpret them and just make up the results, keeping a secret tally to keep them even. If anyone challenges you about why a specific pairing of symbols doesn’t mean the same as it did last time, make up some bullshit about dependency on previous throws.
I’m fairly sure that scheme won’t get me the job either.
As I said, this was decades ago, so I’m sure I am forgetting something crucial. It was and still is in the middle of town and not out in the countryside or a suburb, if that matters. But believe me, conditions were such that it couldn’t be done, or at least not without prohibitive expense. The goal was impossible, unbeknownst to us at the time, and the instructor’s goal was to see how we approached the problem.
A lake in that situation is probably dammed where there is no such thing anymore as a “natural” outflow of water. Water flow out would be a balancing act between giving downstream enough, but not too much water, and keeping sufficient water in the lake for anything that needs it.
Inflow pipes for water treatment, etc were presumably constructed with the original level in mind, even if you could keep the water level down at a lower level, now you;re having to change all of that as well.
I’ll try to explain it so an idiot can understand. Take two Dominoes pizza boxes. On the thin sides, number them 1-8 or 2-9. Then, stack them on top of each other like your day job. Then, turn one box 45 degrees so that when you look down on them, you see 8 points. Secure them together with glue. Then, reduce it to the dimensions of dice. When rolled, one dice will always be face up and the other will always be on edge. If rolled, it should never end up perpendicular to the surface.
At least I got 8 out of 11, the 0-1 or 13+ answers wouldn’t even get one.
Thought of another one:
Design two dice that float in liquid, showing any side equally. One dice is numbered 1-6, the other one is 7-12. Then, take a Magic 8 ball, open it, and remove the regular dice in there. Put in the two dice and re-close the 8 ball. When shaken, the odds of any number 1-12 showing up in the window is equal, as only one face of one dice will show up.
This idea is 12 numbers, not 11, but all numbers 2-12 have an equal chance of being rolled, which is 1 out of 12.
I know it probably says “show working” and “use the numerical method X” .
(Newtons presumably - poor choice of start point. )
But if the answer is obvious from some other means , eg “Newtons done in the head”, then its unfair to mark down the answer (not found by the exact method asked for)…
because they may have used Newton’s but skipped the part where it went awry.
I believe this is a valid solution:
Die #1: 3 faces say A, 3 faces say B.
Die #2: face 1 says A2 B3. Face 2 says A4 B5. Face 3 says A6 B7. Face 4 says A8 B9. Face 5 says A10 B11. Face 6 says A12 B reroll both dice. B could say 1, pi, or 42 for that matter and the result would still meet the challenge.
I would bet 2 and 12 all day long at craps if I could play with these dice.
Die #1: 2-7. Die #2: 8-12, plus a ‘reroll both dice’ face.
Apply whichever face comes up on the die closest to you. (Equally close? Reroll.)
If the watertable wasn’t at the lake’s level, then the lake would drain (or fill) until they matched (slowly, between rainstorms). And for something big enough to be called a lake, it’s not too likely that there’s an impermeable layer creating a local groundwater level different from the general surroundings. So, yeah, you should assume they’re pretty close.
But even if the lake is made of a waterproof concrete bottom, completely separate from the local water table, deepening it wouldn’t help-- it floods because water is coming in faster then it can get out. Making it deeper only helps for the first rainstorm, which fills the lake back up to the level of the outlet, and now it’s ready to flood again.
But you’re absolutely right about delaying the stormwater. Best thing to do is rip out all the pavement, roofs and other surfaces in the lake’s watershed, and put in forest. That way the rainwater tends to infiltrate into the ground, and reach the lake slowly over many days, rather than going through a pipe and reaching the lake all at once within an hour. Plus the trees will use a lot of water, so less water reaches the lake at all.
Next best solution is keep the pavement, but send as much of the stormwater as possible to raingardens or retention basins or other things that let the water infiltrate into the ground.
This is not a true KM scenario, this came to mind when reading the threads:
“Bridgekeeper: Stop. Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see.
Sir Lancelot: Ask me the questions, bridgekeeper. I am not afraid.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your name?
Sir Lancelot: My name is Sir Lancelot of Camelot.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your quest?
Sir Lancelot: To seek the Holy Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your favourite colour?
Sir Lancelot: Blue.
Bridgekeeper: Go on. Off you go.
Sir Lancelot: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.
Sir Robin: That’s easy.
Bridgekeeper: Stop. Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see.
Sir Robin: Ask me the questions, bridgekeeper. I’m not afraid.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your name?
Sir Robin: Sir Robin of Camelot.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your quest?
Sir Robin: To seek the Holy Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What… is the capital of Assyria?
[pause]
Sir Robin: I don’t know that.
[he is thrown over the edge into the volcano]
Sir Robin: Auuuuuuuugh.
Bridgekeeper: Stop. What… is your name?
Galahad: Sir Galahad of Camelot.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your quest?
Galahad: I seek the Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your favourite colour?
Galahad: Blue. No, yel…
[he is also thrown over the edge]
Galahad: auuuuuuuugh.
Bridgekeeper: Hee hee heh. Stop. What… is your name?
King Arthur: It is ‘Arthur’, King of the Britons.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your quest?
King Arthur: To seek the Holy Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
King Arthur: What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
Bridgekeeper: Huh? I… I don’t know that.
[he is thrown over]
Bridgekeeper: Auuuuuuuugh.
Sir Bedevere: How do know so much about swallows?
King Arthur: Well, you have to know these things when you’re a king, you know.”
-Monty Python and the Holy Grail
As part of a pharmacy residency Multiple Mini Interview, I was asked this:
- You have seen two people at a primary care clinic run in a small rural town. Person #1 is a child with developmental and physical disabilities, while Person #2 is an 80 year old woman with diabetes. A deadly, virulent influenza epidemic is sweeping the country. Both pt’s #1 and #2 want to know if they should receive the influenza shot. However, the clinic has only 1 shot remaining. You cannot give the shot to yourself, as you are already immunized.
I have come across something similar twice. Once was an officer selection process with the RAF where a candidate was asked to complete a task leading a group and there was no possible correct answer given the equipment allowed. It was intended to investigate how someone coped under impossible situations.
Thirty years later I came across the same technique, this time with sex offenders. Given a task that was impossible, how did they cope with frustration when their repeated attempts were rebuffed for a series of reasons. This time it was measuring frustration and impulse control.
Start by immunizing whichever of the two has more contact with the public. Then order more doses of vaccine from your suppliers, and then place the whole town under quarantine conditions, because if this flu strain is that dangerous and you’re already out of vaccine, desperate measures are needed for everyone.
Therapist: “You’re walking down the street when you see a ten year old girl walking toward you.”
Ex-Offender: “I mind my own business.”
Therapist: “You can’t, you have an overwhelming desire to molest her. You’ve got to do something now.”
Ex-Offender: “I enter the closest door.”
Therapist: “You walk through a door into a building. There’s a Girl Scout meeting here. You’re getting a raging boner.”
Ex-Offender: “I walk outside.”
Therapist: “You’re back outside. The girl continues to walk toward you.”
Ex-Offender: “I turn around and walk back in the direction I came from.”
Therapist: “A few seconds after you start walking, you see the West Lake High School Varsity Cheerleading Squad coming your way. You want to do them so bad.”
Ex-Offender: “I’d rather not go to jail, so I keep my pants up and my hands to myself.”
Therapist: “Remember, you’re an out-of-control sex offender. You can’t do that. Your hands are moving toward the first girl’s body. Do something now if you don’t want to go back to jail!”
Ex-Offender: “I run across the street.”
Therapist: “You can’t, registered sex offenders in this jurisdiction can’t come within 500 feet of a public park. It’s a felony. The 500 foot distance circle from West Cedar Municipal Park cuts through the center of the road.”
Ex-Offender: “I scream for help.”
Therapist: “A cop sees you and arrests you for Creating a Disturbance. The prosecutor recommends that you be sentenced to 50 years to life as a repeat offender. How do you plead?”
No, not specific to sexual offending but to general impulse control under pressure. Given reasonable impulse control, frustration results in seeking a way to accept and frame negative emotions from failure. Poor impulse control results in explosive negative actions.
Placed in an impossible situation one hopes that people can accept failure rather than act out their frustrations on the environment or other actors.
Give the shot to myself anyway; Melius est parum cum eo.
So, not only is The rapist treating himself, he’s also playing lawyer?? Pro se babulus est.
Even if you rephrase this such that the flu is now “Literally the disease the most hyper-excitable thought AIDS was in the early 1990s”* and make the shot “the only cure there ever was or ever could be, no plans, no prototypes, no notes, no backups, and no take-backs”, this still isn’t a good example of a Kobayashi Maru Scenario: The correct answer is to give it to the child. Period. That’s how our culture works now. You’d have to make the child into a cancer patient with only six months left to live and the 80-year-old diabetic into a grandmother of sixty who volunteers at the soup kitchen and personally keeps millions of puppies from dying every year in order to make it a difficult test.
*(Somewhere, I have a text file on my machine that predicted that by 199X, all public schools, pools, and civil societies would be closed down due to AIDS.)
Sometimes I luv having insomnia; you get to see the weirdest shit in the middle of the night.
And now with the bump removed you seem like the crazy person. 
Story of my life. Show up late to the party, now suddenly I’m the weirdo.
I think we need a synopsis of the cornfielded nocturnal emission that you encountered here if you want to dispel our impression that you’re the weirdo.