View Full Version : Friday's Food For Fort (Thought) Part III
In the world of Affiliates and Merchants
Anything written herein is purely fictional and is not based on characters in the real world. This does not affect your statutory rights, if such rights even have anything to do with me trying to protect myself against a public suing but I can see these rights mentioned on the back of my Snickers Flapjack :D
Part I
In the world of Affiliates and Merchants, every person is either an affiliate or a merchant. Affiliates always tell the truth whereas merchants never tell the truth.
One day, a member of the ShopWindow team came into the world and encountered three persons, A, B, and C.
He asked A, "Are you an affiliate, or a merchant?"
A mumbled an answer that the ShopWindow team member could not understand.
Our ShopWindow hero then asked person B, "What did he say?"
B replied, "A said there is exactly one affiliate among us."
Then C bellowed out, "Don't believe B, he is lying!"
What are B and C?
Part II
One day after all of the confusion had died down, our ShopWindow team member went to the world of affiliates and merchants and encountered an inhabitant who said, "Either I am a merchant or else two plus two equals five."
What should we conclude?
Confuscius
25-04-08, 11:27
Part I - A must be a Merchant because he provided little or no useful information!
Part II - On a point of clarification, do your numbers include or exclude VAT?
Overall - My conclusion is that there are three kinds of people in the affiliate marketing world. Those who can count, and those who can't!
Paul
when A & B are asked a question, 'C adds content in without being prompted', therefore C CANNOT possibly be a merchant, and therefore must be an affiliate, and tells the truth. This means that B is lying, therefore more than one affiliate exists. Since C has been established as an affiliate, and since B has been established as a lier, then A must also be an affiliate (because there is more than one affiliate).
So A and C are affiliates, and B is a merchant.
What was the question again? and why isn't A counted in the vote? RECOUNT!
Part I = Both B & C must be merchants, as A has to be an affiliate due to telling the truth but in an uncpomrehnelsbe manner.
Part II = Must be both an affiliate and a merchant, for telling what is believed to be the truth, being over confident and showing the clear mathematical signs of having produced a typical datafeed for one of a number of companies.
Unfortunately a company logo was not present for A, B or C though, so no definative conclusion was able to be reached.
Confuscius
25-04-08, 15:13
Part II - as I have not received clarification of the VAT issue then this leaves me in a bit of a quandry.
I have assumed that in posing the original question then the decimal precision used is to zero decimal places!
Therefore, if there is no VAT to add then 2 + 2 = 4, however adding VAT leads me to 2.35 + 2.35 = 4.70 which then taking into account that 2 is an approximation for 2 plus or minus 0.5 then as everyone knows that this gives me 2 + 2 = 5 rounding each figure to zero decimal places.
As most Merchants are VAT registered then the likelihood is that 2 plus 2 does in fact equal 5 in affiliate marketing circles.
Thus, I have shown the importance of knowing whether or not VAT is included in item prices as being paid on a VAT inclusive basis leads to a 25% increase in my commissions!
Paul
Part One:
C claims that B lies, so both cannot be speaking the truth; in fact one must be telling the truth (making them an affiliate) and the other must then be lying (thus making them a merchant).
So let's suppose that B is the affiliate; then what he says must be true. So if B is an affiliate, then A commented that there is exactly one affiliate among the three people in our magical world of Affiliates and Merchants.
Is A an affiliate? No, that's not possible, because A's statement would then have to be true, but A and B would both then be affiliates, so it would in fact be false.
Could A's statement be false? In that case, A and C would be merchants and B is an affiliate, so there would be one affiliate among them, and A's statement would then in turn be true, which is impossible, since A is supposed to be a merchant. Thus on the supposition that B is an affiliate, either supposition about A's statement is going to be impossible.
The only way of avoiding the contradiction is to conclude that B's statement is not true. Hence B is a merchant and C is an affiliate. Nothing can be determined about A.
Part two:
The only thing you can conclude is that the author of this problem is no affiliate. It is impossible for an inhabitant of our special world of Affiliates and Merchants to say, "Either I am a merchant or two plus two equals five."
If an affiliate were to say it, it would be false, and an affiliate does not says anything false. If a merchant said it, it would be true, and a merchant says nothing true.
So the only thing to conclude is that a person lies if he or she tells you that he encountered such a thing in a world he or she describes as I have described the world of Affiliates and Merchants.
So those who answered B = Merchant and C = Affiliate were correct!