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

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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.
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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

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
 
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".

I’m probably showing my retard but I have to disagree. Math tests especially are specifically designed to trick you. I was a “gifted kid” and the smug look on a teacher’s face when they tripped up the “smart kids” with shitty wording made ten year old me fedpost.

If school was actually about teaching and not about punishment and embarrassment, looking at the different avenues to solve a math problem would be the focus, and not timed tests that are irrelevant to your average person’s lot in life— being poor, uneducated, and frightened.

I took high-level math in college and it was far easier than some “basic” algebra that was shuffled to me and my peers via public school. Don’t know why people are caping for the entirely broken indoctrination machine as if being good at it is any better in the long run.

Besides, I use math every day now and I couldn’t solve this shit. Fuck Klein and his slow-ass reading speed.
 
I am more confused on how this is a 5th grade question? I didn't start learning this kind of algebra until 7th grade.

Catholic/private school? They tend to move a bit faster than public schools.

I can't math. I'm good with everything else. But not math. It's really complicated compared to literary stuff. And I have always sucked at fractions. I had turtors and spend hours every day studying and still couldn't get past elementary algebra without luck on my side.
 
I’m probably showing my retard but I have to disagree. Math tests especially are specifically designed to trick you. I was a “gifted kid” and the smug look on a teacher’s face when they tripped up the “smart kids” with shitty wording made ten year old me fedpost.
I don't care about shit that happened when you were 10 years old, that has no bearing on this specific question.

Besides, I use math every day now and I couldn’t solve this shit. Fuck Klein and his slow-ass reading speed.
:story: I don't know how to respond to this statement other than saying lmao.

The question was badly written, and when I got 48 as the answer I was even more confused because how the fuck does it take a week to read a 48 page book.
The fact that you think abstract math problems need to make sense is probably a sign that you have autism, or something. The whole point of using word problems in math is to teach your brain how to parse shit like "Steve is twice as old and Jan, and Luis is half as old as Steve, how old is Jan if their ages all add up to 120" and transform it into a mathematical formula that you can then use algebra to solve. It doesn't matter if James is able to physically eat 158 apples or if John can actually carry 420 cakes, or if Mary can take out a $26999 loan when her monthly pay is only $129.

So far this thread has been 50% KiwiFarms users being OK at math and 50% Kiwifarms users being functionally math-illiterate at a 5th grade level but blaming it on how the question is asked, as opposed to realizing they're fucking stupid.
 
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I would expect a 10-11 year old to be capable of solving this.
They are or were; that wouldn't be out of the norm for me when I was going through school. I was introduced to fractions in or around 4th grade or so, that came with learning how to add and subtract them; 5th grade would've been how to multiply and divide them. And I wasn't going to some fucking prep academy named after some old dude; general population in my middle of nowhere school.

As for why adults can't help their child with this; illiteracy.
 
The way the question is written is what makes the confusion.
The problem is the way its written. No field just swings back and forth like that.
That's what makes it a damn math problem. I can't believe so many people have difficulty with the concept that the whole point of word problems is to derive clear mathematical formulas from muddy information.

What you're complaining about is the raison d'etre of algebra in the first place.
 
That's what makes it a damn math problem. I can't believe so many people have difficulty with the concept that the whole point of word problems is to derive clear mathematical formulas from muddy information.

What you're complaining about is the raison d'etre of algebra in the first place.
In that case, it's more of structuring your sentences properly.
 
Math tests especially are specifically designed to trick you.
The indistry I work in (and I suspect many others) has these training courses and there’s always a test at the end. I went in a bit of a crusade a few years ago becasue too many questions were written to trick, not to test knowledge. Instead of ‘in situation x, is regulation y or z applicable’ you’d get phrasing like ‘if situation x is not being discounted then is z not applicable?’ You’d get three or four nested negatives in a sentence. To a native English speaker it’s doable but we are an international industry and these aren’t language tests, they’re suppose to test whether you know that situation x warrants solution y becasue z will get you sued.
 
So far this thread has been 50% KiwiFarms users being OK at math and 50% Kiwifarms users being functionally math-illiterate at a 5th grade level but blaming it on how the question is asked, as opposed to realizing they're fucking stupid.
It really explains an awful lot about the world when you realize people are, on average, more educated now than at any time in human history and most of their brains still blue screen when they try to do sixth-grade algebra.
 
"He completed the remaining quarter of the book on Wednesday."

This is the crucial part that all the stumped people are overlooking. It's more an indictment of reading comprehension than math.
That's what threw me off the first time. I didn't pay attention to the "remaining" but once I re-read it, it made perfect sense.

Here's how I solved it, should anyone care. It's identical to the OP if you missed it in their post...I don't know why the article went backward to express it in fractional terms rather than gross all of the variables up to whole numbers.

30+1/8x+1/4x = x

30+1/8x+2/8x = x
240+x+2x = 8x
240+3x = 8x
240 = 5x
x = 48
 
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The indistry I work in (and I suspect many others) has these training courses and there’s always a test at the end. I went in a bit of a crusade a few years ago becasue too many questions were written to trick, not to test knowledge. Instead of ‘in situation x, is regulation y or z applicable’ you’d get phrasing like ‘if situation x is not being discounted then is z not applicable?’ You’d get three or four nested negatives in a sentence. To a native English speaker it’s doable but we are an international industry and these aren’t language tests, they’re suppose to test whether you know that situation x warrants solution y becasue z will get you sued.

This must be the big-brained way tech companies are getting around hiring only poos.

Maybe math really is racist... :cunningpepe:
 
This thread is funny to sift through.
Really I think the mindset one has going into the question is what matters a lot, this is where "good test taker" comes into play. For a student, they see questions like these often enough they should be able to figure it out faster than those who don't, but once you ignore everything except the numbers and break it down it should be trivial.

That said, a lot of people are terrible at solving for x no matter what.
 
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This thread is funny to sift through.
Really I think the mindset one has going into the question is what matters a lot, this is where "good test taker" comes into play. For a student, they see questions like these often enough they should be able to figure it out faster than those who don't, but once you ignore everything except the numbers and break it down it should be trivial.

That said, a lot of people are terrible at solving for x no matter what.
Something I never saw in school was word problems that intentionally leave out something vital and require the student to identify the least amount of additional information that would be necessary to solve the problem.

I suppose it would be difficult to grade totally objectively, but that's the kind of math problem you deal with in the real world constantly.
 
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