Solution for water pot problem?

As I was going to St Ives

Read the Wikipedia article referenced above. It's an eye opener into the ambiguity of that simple rhyme. In my opinion, Wikipedia missed 6 possible answers since the rhyme only states that the man has 7 wives and not how many were with him. Wikipedia postulates either all or none but he could have any subset of his wives with him.

Yes, I had thought of the suggestions posed by wikipedia - though I must admit I had missed the ambiguity introduced by the 2nd last line. I answer 1 based on the assumption that the riddle does have a definite answer.

As far as I am concerned, there are 2 answers. It's either "1" if we are to assume that we will be told of all entities going to St Ives, or it's "the number of answers is equal to the number of combinations of the earth's population of valid entities" if we are to assume that we will be informed of all entities not travelling to St Ives.

We've been told that there is one person on their way to St Ives, yet we've not been told of anybody that isn't going - therefore every combination of entities on the earth can be assumed to be travelling there. Each uniquely-sized combination represents another valid answer.

If on the otherhand, the riddle is not supposed to be solved I can accept the ambiguities wikipedia lists.

For what it's worth - whenever asked "Is the glass half empty or half full?" my standard answer is "depends what happened to it last - if the last thing that happened was some water was added, the glass is half-full. However, if the last thing that happened was some water was removed, the glass is half empty" As far as I am concerned, point of view has nothing to do with it - it's a very simple case of semantics.(of course I understand the metaphorical use of the question and it's use as a tool for discovering details on a person's outlook and state of mind) I sure do get some quizzical looks as people consider my answer...

I do find this discussion fascinating and I'm willing to beat it to death one more time :) Since this is a programming forum, the importance of a precise problem statement cannot be stressed enough. While I agree that we are not told of the remaining world population that may or may not be going to St. Ives, I'm presuming that since we are told of the meeting with a man, that the man is, in fact, important to the solution, else his presence would not need to be introduced into the problem statement. Yet his presence is ambiguous in both "direction" (is he heading to / from St. Ives) and in the size of his party (we know how many wives he has (in the abstract) but not told how many he has with him. Both peices of information are needed to solve the riddle (if, in fact, it is intended to be solved) else the man is totally unnecessary, as are his wives and their possesions, leaving the riddle to be "As I was going to St. Ives, how many were going to St. Ives", simple, unambiguous, and solvable.

The glass is half full and half empty. Depending on if it is being filled or emptied, it may be half filled or half emptied. That is if you are considering either a liquid or a gas. If you assume both to be fillers, it is full.

You stated that you have 5 pots but failed to indicate the capacities of each pot. Are they uniform or are the pots of different sizes? What is the size of the smallest pot? If it is under 2 liters, the problem is unsolvable. We need to know that before putting in more effort.
PS, I'm in the US and we don't use liters (except for Coca Cola bottles). Would it be ok if we solve this using ounces and/or gallons?

Oh dear, I forgot the smiley face on my reply. I was pointing out the ambiguity of your problem statement. Either you or your instructor were being imprecise, something a software engineer needs to provide a proper solution. In any event, as someone else said in his solution, we don't want to do your homework for you, how would you ever learn if we did.