Actually, one of our B team members negged with odd as well, so I should admit that this question has some elements of a hose. I'd dispute the point that it would cause a math person to get beaten, because I'd tend to doubt that a non math person would come up with 'surjective' very quickly (if at all). I'm not sure if the more common (if grammatically hideous) 'onto' was acceptable, although based on the stare I got from the moderator, I'm going to assume that it wasn't. I do have to agree, though, that the unfortunate choice of examples could easily lead knowledgeable people astray. Of course, given the set of askable functional properties, it isn't easy to narrow the set with just two examples, or to anticipate ways in which people might misinterpret your intentions. Frankly, I was helped by my inability to picture the functions as quickly as they were read, which forced me to wait for the clues which I found useful. J.p. --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, William Paul Meyerson <meyerson_at_f...> wrote: > And one more point, was the function "x^3 - x"? I thought they were > saying "x^3, -x, and tangent of x"... (and similarly, the question on > compactness could very easily have had the answer "closed" for a good part > of the question!) These types of questions actually hurt math people > because those that can think of the multiple answers have to wait until > longer until they know that their answer is right, by which point they may > lose the power or someone else may buzz in > > mmaillia >
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:46 AM EST EST