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I've noticed what I believe may be a slight redundancy in our tag structure, and am wondering if there's something I'm missing.

We have a tag, , for math-oriented puzzles, which is effectively the same as with respect to the information about the question.

In theory, all questions should be about puzzles. Is there a distinct difference between "math" and "calculation puzzle"? If so, how should we define the scopes of these tags?

If not, should we synonymize them?

The reason I ask is that many questions with do not have and vice versa, but I can't really see a difference between the two. People who ask these questions must be using some mental criteria to differentiate, though.

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  • $\begingroup$ Ironically, your question about multiplication puzzles is something I wouldn't consider a calculation puzzle, even though it seems that everything about it is calculation. $\endgroup$
    – user88
    May 29, 2014 at 3:01
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    $\begingroup$ The still-in-its-original-state description of the (recently redubbed) mathematics tag is daunting enough to make me wonder why it has been overapplied. $\endgroup$
    – humn
    Jun 17, 2016 at 16:07

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When I created the tag, I made it specifically to refer to those problems that involved numerical calculation or arithmetic as part of the solving process. There are plenty of math puzzles that don't involve any sort of calculation at all – as Gilles mentioned, anything that's a and involves some other sort of math in the process like group theory or algebra would be an example of something that's tagged as but not .

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In terms of domain, encompasses at least , and .

However, I'm not sure that every puzzle that can be formulated with mathematics should be tagged . I'd spontaneously use on puzzles that involve nontrivial math and not just adding stuff up — so for example including What is the solution to the generic round table problem? or The Nuclear Missile Standoff but not The problem of the hired hands' work rates. Still, since this is pretty broad and somewhat subjective, we should probably stick to more specific tags.

How would N logicians wearing hats of N colors be tagged, though? It isn't calculation, logic or probability. ?

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  • $\begingroup$ Hmm... maybe [math-puzzle] would do better for these? Though that seems a little bit too broad, as it does encompass the three mentioned tags $\endgroup$
    – user20
    May 28, 2014 at 22:27
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    $\begingroup$ @Emrakul How would math-puzzle be anything but a redundantly longer synonym of math? $\endgroup$
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    May 28, 2014 at 22:29

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