How many people will answer this right?

Originally posted by forkedknight
Supposing you ask 6 (or more) people this question. And suppose of these, you have 1 person answer "1", 2 people answer "2", and 3 people answer "3".

Which of the answers is correct?

In this case, all people would be correct.[/b]

No, nobody would be correct. 0 is the only consistent outcome.

Originally posted by forkedknight
"How many people will choose the same answer as you?"

Then, m is a correct answer if m people choose m.

This results in almost the same result map as PEB6 originally stated, except the winners are more clear.

In the original question, the set of answers {1,2,2,3,3,3} would result in one of 4 possible interpretations, all mutually exclusive.

Either the 1 is right, the 2s are right, the 3s are right, or nobody is right. If everybody is correct, then the correct answer is 6, which nobody gave.

It is the case however, that if you cannot choose 0 as an answer, you can always say nobody was right. However, the whole process is still an example of circular logic.

However, if the question were as follows How many people total will give your answer? You have one vital difference. You don't need to know the answer to know who was right at the end. That's because you're only asking how many gave your particular answer..

As a result, the pesky issue of circular references is completely avoided, even though the result would look largely the same..

Originally posted by Palynka
No, nobody would be correct. 0 is the only consistent outcome.

Please forget this post, I misread yours.