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I like the maths question idea. Is there any set of enumerable problems that 
would cause a human no difficulties, for which there isn't a general 
solution algorithm?
I realise this is a maths question, but just wondered if anyone had any 
thoughts.

On 9/19/05, Gavin Kistner <gavin / refinery.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sep 19, 2005, at 6:36 AM, Stephen Veit wrote:
> > I have seen the case where a subscriber is asked to solve a simple
> > math problem. E.g., "what is twelve plus twenty-three?" This would
> > certainly be accessible. You could think of different types of
> > questions like "Enter the number that follows fifty-five." or "What
> > number comes before thirty-two?"
> 
> Interesting. That would probably keep out existing general-purpose
> rakes. But the moment your site becomes popular or targeted, it seems
> to me that it would not be difficult to write a program to answer
> your questions. Even if you include 33 flavors of how to phrase the
> question ("Enter an integer that is not less than (not equal to)
> eighty (reduced by the value represented by the roman numeral V) and
> more 'n seventy with the number of non-thumbs on a standard hand
> added to it.") the engineered bot could be written to handle 20% of
> your phrases, and that would be enough.
> 
> [OT]
> I smell a couple of fun Ruby Quizzes here. One is simply to write an
> english-to-numeric processor.
> value = Numeric.from_english( "eight-hundred thousand, twenty-three
> hundred fifteen")
> 
> Another quiz might be to write such a challenge/response captcha
> system. Make the questions as clear and varied as possible.
> 
> Another might be, given a series of questions like the above, to
> write a 'bot that could answer them.
> 
> 
>

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