Puzzle Description:

A (bad) play on words - think about it for a minute then read the first comment

#1: AT (at1213) on Nov 27, 2009 [SPOILER]

Frosty is a Snowman (F = S)
and Frosty is a Wendy's milkshake(F = M)

So, is a snowman a milkshake? (S = M ?)

I get it

Thats now how logic works. If a implies b and be implies c then a implies c.

For example, if a= it's raining and b= it's wet outside and c= I fall and slip on the ground.

you have

It's raining which means it's wet outside
It's wet outside and I fall and slip on the ground

Therefore I can conclude that if it's raining than I fall and slip on the ground.

you cannot prove that snowman = milkshake using the laws of logic.

Cute puzzle.

Right, I wasn't going with proper logic there (just trying to come up with a creative name for the puzzle) - can't remember the name for the logical fallacy committed; illict minor?

I was way off. Here was my "interpretation" of milkshake, especially based on "bad" from the description.

The snowman could be a snow "woman." If that's the case, then her two breasts, (which produce "milk" and which are represented by the two green pixels) appear to have their natural position "shaken" up and misplaced in a vertical location rather than horizontal. Thus milkshake! LOL

Or it could just be as described in #1. :-)

:-D

Thats a completely normal concept in math. It even has a name (transitive property).

Example:
1+3=4
2+2=4
therefore 1+3=2+2

Why yes I do have math major/teachers for parents, why do you ask?

Well, if you really want to get the math right...

Laura's right about the transitive property, but it doesn't actually apply in this case.

AT translated "Frosty is a Snowman" as F=S. But the relationship between "Frosty" and "Snowman" isn't actually an "equality" relationship. One way to make this obvious is to notice that it isn't reflexive. It is not the case that "Snowman is a Frosty". The correct translation of "Frosty is a Snowman" into mathematical terms would be "F is an element of the set S" or "F ∈ S".

The second sentence, on the other hand, is a true equality statement. "a Frosty is a Wendy's milkshake" and "a Wendy's milkshake is a Frosty" are both true. However AT pulled a different fast one in translating this to "F=M", in that he dropped the "Wendy's" from the sentance. "Frosty is a Milkshake" is not an equality statement because not every Milkshake is a Frosty. It's more of a subset relationship, "F ⊂ M".

AT's third trick was to equate the "Frosty" from the first sentence with the second sentence, which isn't actually the case. But even if you do that, you can't concluded anything from the more carefully translated statements:

F ∈ S
F ⊂ M

Before we can pretend that the two F's are the same, we'll have to consider them both to be sets and rewrite the first one as F ⊂ S. But even after that, you can't conclude much about the relationship between S and M from these two statements. All you can say is that their intersection is not empty.

Wow, Jan. Enough said.

whoa there, now that is some serious logic. AT I think you dug your own grave when you tried comparing a noun to an adjective. And thanks to Michael Keaton's Jack Frost, it's gonna be tough to prove that all snowmen are, in fact, "Frosty".

wow. too much logic in the comments for my poor sleep deprived brain. :)
great puzzle

I liked the explanation. If we could insert graphics, it would merit a Senor Chang "I'll Allow It" GIF.

As AT said in post #5, there was no intent to provide any logic, rigorous or otherwise, to this puzzle. It was just an attempt to come up with a humorous name, with some sort of explanation. It was only the commenters who turned it into a math exercise.

I saw allow AT's explanation, as it was never meant to teach anyone propositional logic.

Silly me. I expected a dancing cow.
Oh well...

Goto next topic

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