[Guest]

There is a newborn baby in a diaper. She is beautiful and sweet , sleeping soundly and contentedly after having finished a seemingly satisfying meal

Being a brand new parent, with a brand new child, sleep is a precious commodity that you must take every opportunity to acquire. The standing rule is that if the baby is sleeping, you also should sleep.

However, through observation and your limited experience you can deduce with 100% certainty the following:

A. The diaper is soiled (The stripe turned blue shortly after the child made some intriguing facial expressions and/or noises. )

B. The baby may or may not wake up when changed, with an unknown chance of going back to sleep shortly after and until the next feeding.

C. If you do not change the diaper, there is an unknown chance the baby will wake up and may or may not go back to sleep until the next feeding.

D. The chance that the baby continues sleeping after a diaper change, and that she will remain sleeping if you do not change the diaper are independent of each other.

E. Also, there is a random chance that the sweet darling will soil the new diaper immediately after changing , renewing the problem, but cumulatively reducing the odds of a successful continuance of sleep.

F. Further, there is an equally random chance that the baby will wake up spontaneously for no discernible reason.

There are two questions here:

1. Based on your overwhelming need for rest, do you change the diaper or not? Please explain your answer.

2. What chance, expressed as a percentage, do you have for sleeping through the remaining golden hour until the next feeding? Show your work, please.

note to mods: I wasn't sure where to post this one. It is a little too irreverent for the new puzzles forum, although I would have been interested in the types of responses it garnered, out of curiosity. While tongue in cheek, it is not exactly funny enough to be a joke. Feel free to move it if you deem it so.

[unreality]

(0) Congratulations on Lyra

(1) Since we don't know any of the chances, we'll call all chances 'c' (between 0 and 1), equal in possible consideration rate because they're unknown and possibly unpredictable values. If we change the diaper, the chance is c that the baby will wake up due to its diaper being changed. If you don't change the diaper, the chance is c that the baby will wake due to its soiled diaper. HOWEVER, if you change the diaper, the chance is again c that the baby will resoil the diaper, so your chances of sleep become (1-c)² (the chance that it won't wake up multiplied by the chance that it won't resoil the diaper) as opposed to a greater 1-c for not changing the diaper. In fact, if the baby soils the diaper n times, your chance of sleep is (1-c)ⁿ, getting smaller and smaller as n increases. Because this could go on for the Hawking-Einstein Soil Limit (2.8069 times 10¹³, a constant denoted by L), the chances of being able to get to sleep after changing the diaper are the astronomically tiny chances of (1-c)^L. Therefore, if you change the diaper, it's unlikely that you'll get any sleep. If you leave the baby sleeping in the diaper, you are more likely - however, you have to factor in your love for the baby and also your own sense of smell - you have a strong parental (and scental) urge to relieve the baby from its dirty diaper.

That being said, we know that the chance value of 'c' is actually 1 - it's 100% likely that the baby will wake up in either case. That reduces both (1-c)^L and 1-c to 0 values, which means either way you will get absolutely no sleep tonight.

Therefore, you might as well change the diaper.

(2) Like I said, this chance is 0

[andromeda]

In addition to what Unreality said () you have to count in the Murphy's law!

So what ever you do the outcome will be quite the opposite!

So that only confirms what Unreality had said already. Either way... you want to get some sleep, so either way it ain't gonna happen!

Kiss her for me and tell that andromeda from far far away sent that!

[akaslickster]

Stripe turned blue? Hmm. It must be something new. We had cloth diapers with large pins to be poked with, and a service truck to pick-up the dirty and drop off the washed ones. I may have had someone elses on accident.

Anyway, you can sleep without it being a deep REM sleep. I survive all of the time. Once there is another person to start changing diapers, you then make up the lost sleep for 10 hours.

Answering yes. Change the diaper and be a good dad. Other option is hire a nanny.

Edited April 8, 2009 by akaslickster

[Guest]

I'd say change the diaper and be a good parent.

However, if we're just looking at the logic I would say it is best to leave the diaper unchanged. We know that the current situation is dirty diaper + baby is asleep, and will obtain at least a few moments of rest before the baby awakens to its dirty diaper. We know that the alternate situation is to change the diaper and risk the baby waking up (I would put the odds of baby waking up given changing diaper to be high), and will run the risk of the baby waking up after the diaper is changed regardless of whether the diaper is dirty or not. So, for the moment we are given two real scenarios that we can be in. A.) is sleeping baby without diaper changing happening, and B.) is changing the diaper.

We are in A, which has a risk of the baby waking. Our only option is whether or not to enter B which will change the odds of the baby waking, and if B is successful than all it does is put us back in A.

Edit: And yes, none of this takes into account Murphy's Law, which states that the baby will not wake up until the second before you fall asleep, regardless of your decision.

Edited April 8, 2009 by SomeGuy

[Guest]

:lol: Those are the responses I was hoping for. Thanks for the laugh folks! (and yes, I changed the diaper)

[Guest]

We had cloth diapers with large pins to be poked with, and a service truck to pick-up the dirty and drop off the washed ones.

The blue stripe is on the disposables we're using until she's big enough for the cloth ones we have. Just a couple more pounds, I'd think.

[Guest]

...does the blue stripe indicate solid or liquid?...as a mom I quickly learned that a wet diaper was often tolerated for longer than a solid one...unfortunately solid was most often the result of just being fed followed by just falling asleep...when Chay had a solid diaper, if I did not change it within a few minuets she would let out a horible shriek...but she could sleep for hours with a wet diaper and not make a peep...

...how old is your little one...this also affects the diaper changing frequency...until Chay was 2 months old we HAD to change her diaper every 2 hours [pediatritian's orders]...90% of the time that ment me because 'solid stuff' made my husband sick...