5th-grade student’s exam question has left adults stumped - ITT: Kiwis MATI because they can't Math

(Article, archive)
One sibling has been left scratching their head at their younger brother’s Year 5 math exam.

The question, shared to Reddit, asks students to figure out how many pages are in a book.

“Klein read 30 pages of a book on Monday and one eighth of the book on Tuesday,” the question read.

“He completed the remaining quarter of the book on Wednesday. How many pages are there in the book?”

Some social media users were immediately stumped by the question.


One person commented: “And now we can all see why “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” worked as a game show.”

“Today I learned I would fail fifth grade math,” another said on the thread.

One passionate person said: “I always think to my self; ‘Ugh. People should really be tested with basic skills before they’re allowed to go out into society.”

“And then I see this and realize I shouldn’t go out into society LOL!”

Not everyone agreed the question difficult.

“Not to be rude, but what is interesting about this,” one said.

“It looks just like any other math problem that I’ve done in 5th grade.”

Someone with a PhD in engineering, with a focus on applied mathematics, said it wasn’t difficult to work out but it came with the assumption that Klein started the book on Monday.

Once you have that, you divide 30 pages by five to see how much one eighth is worth, with the answer being six.

Math lovers then just do the simple multiplication of eight times six, with the answer being 48, and the equation is solved.

---

Really hate how math illiterate our society is. This problem is a basic equation

Spoiler: Math solution

30+x/8+×/4=x

where x is the #of pages read, and the 3 counts they give you have to add up to x.

we multiply by 8 to make our lives easier

240+x+2x=8x

then we bring the xs to one side
240 = 8x-x-2x
add the xs
240= 5x
then divide by 5
48=x

I hate people who suck at math

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Here is the reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinte..._grade_brothers_math_exam/?sort=controversial

A few favorites:
View attachment 4601573
View attachment 4601576
View attachment 4601580

A voice of reason:
View attachment 4601592

"hEiR gO"

 

[Heed Not]

There are adults incapable of elementary school math who get to select our government representatives. Just remember that whenever [person you didn't vote for] does [thing anybody should've seen coming]

 

[Kheapathic]

There are adults incapable of elementary school math who get to select our government representatives. Just remember that whenever [person you didn't vote for] does [thing anybody should've seen coming]

Competency tests are racist and used to stop emancipated slaves from voting; ergo, we can't do that.

 

[breadandcircuses]

What kinda illiterate retard takes three days to read a 48 page book...?

 

[Bungdit Din]

The 5th grade Soooolver

>Ugh, I'm gonna sooolve!
>Just a binomial, bro
>Skips leg day; quadratics, not quads
>Converts fractions into decimals. And back again!
>Figures it out in his head, shows his workings anyway
>Understands Principia is a rape manual, still his favourite book
>Doesn't divide by zero

Um... little help?

 

[Heed Not]

Competency tests are racist and used to stop emancipated slaves from voting; ergo, we can't do that.

There's also this flawed notion that "Well, they might not be good at some fancy standardized test, but they're obviously smart if you get to know them!" I can't say those people don't exist because I've personally collected IQ test data from families and have actually encountered families where there are 120IQ high school dropouts, but that's absurdly rare.

 

[Fascist Frederick]

public void Maff()
{
    for (float i = 1; i < 1000; i++)
    {
        if (30 + (i * 0.125f) + (i * 0.25f) == i)
        {
            Console.Write(string.Format("The answer is {0}.", i));
            break;
        }
    }
}

Edited for maximal autism.

 

[Angry Alt Right Nerd]

There's also this flawed notion that "Well, they might not be good at some fancy standardized test, but they're obviously smart if you get to know them!" I can't say those people don't exist because I've personally collected IQ test data from families and have actually encountered families where there are 120IQ high school dropouts, but that's absurdly rare.

They probably get the idea that they have some kind of wisdom or street smarts over book smarts, which is actually similar to the way conservatives tend to view themselves. They're both severely wrong though.

 

[Ishtar]

The way the question is written is what makes the confusion.

Klein reads thirty pages on Monday-is he starting the book, in the middle, at the end?

If the question was so phrased "Klein started a book and read thirty pages of said book on Monday, then read 1/8ths and then 2/8ths"-the question would be much simpler.

As it gives the test taker a clear idea of the total quantity accounted for-there isn't anything before the thirty pages to account for.

Math questions like this are often designed to trip you up-because you often are paying attention to irrelevant information or subconsciously considering irrelevant information(i.e. if there is more before the thirty pages). Clarify what you're supposed to be considering and they become much easier.*

*It was something I learned in third grade, though if you haven't been in school for over a decade you stop training yourself on focusing on what is important or clear.

 

[WelfareNiggerQueen]

Americans and their obsolete systems of measurement.

Eurofags struggle with fractions worse than those who were forced to advance due to 'no child left behind'. Just because of this N'wah, I'm going to ruin Europe by making fractions a part of your standardized curriculum. No, you will learn decimals after fractions just as an added fuck you.

 

[HarblMcDavid]

I looked at the question, wondered why the fuck 3 days were needed for so few pages, and didn't feel a need to get terribly exact about it once I realized 3/8 was the key to the actual number.

Here is the reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinte..._grade_brothers_math_exam/?sort=controversial

A few favorites:
View attachment 4601573
snip

Excuse me...heir go? Fucking heir go?!?

That's more offensive to me than adults unable to find some way of noodling this math problem out while well off enough to post on reddit regularly.

 

[Pee Cola]

It didn't take me long to figure it out, but I spent more time second guessing myself because the (correct) answer was too obvious.

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

Articles like these are proof of the dead internet theory being true. There's no way a real living person who isn't a bot would think this shit is difficult or interesting or worth discussing and writing articles about. It's boomer facebook tier shovel content, it's trash.

 

[VargReallyDidNothingWrong]

I tried doing the US military ASVAB test a few days ago because I remembered breezing through it as a kid. The math portion of the test was harder than I remembered it, but mostly because you just stop remembering how to do algebra if you don't do it for 15 or 20 years.

 

[Secret Asshole]

The problem is the way its written. No field just swings back and forth like that. Its also more common to use percentages than fractions, especially for odd fractions like 1/8. Also the question has no applicability, its literally pointless.

This is a large problem with math, it does not use decent examples when you don't need to figure out how many pages are in a book, you can look in it. This has long since been a problem and only leads to rote learning, not critical thinking. You have no idea how to apply these sort of mathematics in different situations.

 

[VargReallyDidNothingWrong]

The way the question is written is what makes the confusion.

Klein reads thirty pages on Monday-is he starting the book, in the middle, at the end?

If it was phrased as "Klein ate 30 pieces of pizza" would you have given a shit if he took the slices out of the pizza from the top, the bottom, or the left hand side?

The fact that you think people need to have "he started reading the book from the beginning" specified in order to not break their brain then that's just more proof that the people who can't figure this question out are fucking imbeciles. You read books starting at the beginning. You do not start reading a book 10 pages from the end. And if you did, it wouldn't count as "finishing the book".

 

[Unamused Bounty Hunter]

That's not too bad tbh. In my high school the classes were separated by how well you did, with the most brain-dead niggers at the bottom and the future Walter Whites and prodigy 14 year old Asians at the top, and even then the top class people still immediately reach for a calculator to figure out the cosine of π/2 (radians ofc) on their last year.

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

I find it funny that Reddit can't handle this Math problem, which is straight forward, but will shit on people that have problems with orders of operation in ambiguously constructed ones. I guess there isn't any way for a midwit to get a dopamine hit from this one.

 

[DamnWolves!]

I've seen a lot of wacky boomer math solutions in this thread, but IMO, the cleanest way to state this problem is this way, by far:

30 + 1/8x = 3/4x
where x = the number of pages in the book.

30 = 3/4x - 1/8x
30 = 5/8x
30 * 8 = 5x
240 = 5x
x = 48

You know 3/4 of the book have been read by Tuesday. Now we aren't doing any wacky shit, we're just subtracting an 1/8th from 3/4 and dividing both sides by 5/8.

 

[Safir]

Is this a joke? Because this is second grade in Russian schools. Age 8. Right after the times table.

Just in case, I checked if the first letters of every post make up "niggerfaggot". They do not.