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Can you solve the sorting hat riddle? - Dan Katz and Alex Rosenthal

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6,020 Questions Answered

TEDEd Animation

Let’s Begin…

It’s your first day at Magnificent Marigold’s Magical Macademy. But before you can learn your first spell you must get through the sorting ceremony. And the sorting hat has chosen you for a special challenge. The Macademy had 8 founders who established four houses, and there was once a mysterious fifth house. Can you figure out who founded what? Dan Katz and Alex Rosenthal show how.

Additional Resources for you to Explore

Logic can be frustrating, especially when you're stuck trying to solve a riddle. Using logic means crossing the intersection of math and philosophy. In this lesson you're asked to decipher and reason through the sorting hat riddle with only a few cryptic clues. Can you solve it and claim your prize? *Clue - Paying attention to details, no matter how small, will be a step in the right direction.

A great place to start a lifelong journey of logic problem solving is at its academic origins. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an easy to navigate website called Classical Logic. Mathigon has a page dedicated to Logic and Paradoxes which will help you continue to sharpen this important skillset. It is a great site for engaging visuals and activities. Author and speaker Giorgio Nardone created a web page dedicated to non-ordinary logic via Strategic Logic and Problem Solving. Nardone suggests that using logic to solve problems goes further that rigour as might occur by using something along the lines of the Strategic Problem Solving Model often ascribed to Sir Karl Popper, not dismissing its use, but adding non-linear logic to the process.

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Meet The Creators

  • Educator Alex Rosenthal, Dan Katz
  • Director Igor Coric
  • Narrator Addison Anderson
  • Art Director Igor Coric
  • Storyboard Artist Igor Coric
  • Animator Igor Coric
  • Compositor Igor Coric
  • Director of Production Gerta Xhelo
  • Editorial Director Alex Rosenthal
  • Producer Bethany Cutmore-Scott
  • Fact-Checker Eden Girma
  • Special Thanks Will Gourley

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