Setup and Rule Diagrams

[Adam Tyson]

One clue is the complete absence of any rules regarding order, FernGully, along with no mention of order in the scenario. The planes are "flying" in the show, rather than "will be flown one at a time" or "are to be flown consecutively," etc. No rules say anything about "a lower numbered plane" or "Bob flies at some time after Ed" or "Cindy files immediately before Fran." Don't impose order where the rules and scenario don't indicate one! The statement that they are "flying" suggests that they are all in the air.

Many students make the false inference that a pilot or copilot could be on a plane, land, switch planes, and take off again, so that they could be aboard multiple planes. That makes sense in terms of a real airshow, after all. This seemingly reasonable possibility, not expressly forbidden by the scenario, led to LSAC getting a lot of angry backlash, and while they did a decent job of defending their position about it being impossible for anyone to fly in more than one plane, I think they learned their lesson and would never make the same mistake again (although they would never admit that it was a mistake, and they have a point. Sort of.)

I tell my students that they shouldn't let this issue concern them too much as it is unlikely to come up again. If LSAC were to present a similar game in the future, they would probably include some rule along the lines of "each pilot and each copilot is aboard exactly one of the planes" or "no pilot or copilot may be aboard more than one plane." So if you had this problem, take it as a learning opportunity and don't stress over it. You're in good company and unlikely to have that problem again. You've been vaccinated!

[RAMIREZNANCYG@GMAIL.COM]

I just worked through this grouping game. I did well on the game, however, I had to look through the questions to be able to deduce that each pilot could only fly one plane. By just reading the rules I was not able to really see that each pilot could only be on one plane.

Is it that only one pilot can fly one plane because the scenario says, the pilots are "all aboard planes that are flying?" Are we suppose to assume the planes are already flying?

[Adam Tyson]

Correct. The fact that they are flying, rather than "available to fly" or something like that, means they are in the air, so you cannot be on two planes at once.