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.

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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

 

[byuu]

Think what is tripping people up is using fractions to describe amount of a book you read.

Is "1/4 of a book" such a jump from something like "I read half of the book"?

 

[Seventh Star]

3/4-1/8 = 5/8
So to see what 1/8 is, you divide 30 by 5 because 30 pages is 5/8's of the book.

Did I fuck up? I got a total of 51 pages. Article says 240.

 

[VargReallyDidNothingWrong]

Then make real world problems not overly complicated word problems for simple concepts.

Yeah, we need to make school even easier, there's some stupid kids in each year that aren't passing. Lower the bar!

Nigga, I'm an a goddamn electrical engineer, spare me. I'm against the ass backwards method the school uses. This is a shit question. And in the real world you would send back a email asking for clarification.

No wonder the chinks and poos are taking your job.

 

[Matt Damon]

When I was in middle school, the gifted kids started Algebra in 6th grade.

Despite being in the gifted class, I had a hell of a time with sixth-grade algebra.

I just didn't have the abstract mental capacity to understand the connection between y=mx+b and graphing a line. I was able to robotically produce it by strictly following the procedure I was given, but I had no conceptual understanding of what it meant or how it related to the equation.

 

[Grub]

Did I fuck up? I got a total of 51 pages. Article says 240.

30/5 = 6 so 1/8 of the book is 6 pages
6*8 = 48 pages total because there are 8 1/8ths in a whole.

 

[Matt Damon]

Is "1/4 of a book" such a jump from something like "I read half of the book"?

"I'm reading this new book."

"Oh, cool. Is it good?"

"Well, I'm only about a quarter of the way through it, so-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down there, Einstein!"

 

[Ita Mori]

ITT: A lot of niggers who hate math.

 

[Baraadmirer]

So next time, say how many slices are in a pie? I thought it was structured similarly to the OP question.

As a minor PL I once worked at a stand where they sold pizzas in quarter slices. Even some of the customers were perplexed, but it made up for the price I guess?

 

[Fomo Hoire]

Ok, the question is not properly stated: people assuming 30+1/4+1/8= the answer are assuming he started the book with the 30 pages, but that is not stated, so, there is ñot enough info to give a solid answer, if 48 was the answer the teacher was looking for, the question should have stated: "Klein read the first 30 pages of a book on monday..."

Try being the student that weasels out of doing any work by inventing variables out of nowhere, especially before variables officially exist. Unless the teacher isn't allowed to fail you because mommy is on the school board or you're a niglet, you aren't going to get very good grades for answering every math problem with a rubber stamp that says "IMPOSSIBLE TO SOLVE; PROBLEM WAS NOT STATED TO BE IN BASE 10".

I've had a class where every single solution started with the phrase "SRS: Not given, but we shall assume that it is one."

Even when the statisticians are giving us junk data, we were forced to take the path of most work; teachers would sooner make students make an ASS out of U and ME than they would allow a student to skip a problem*.

And if a kid got to February without realizing how much teachers like making kids work, they're too stupid to even be in school.

*Fine print: There is an exception to this rule, the assignment where you have to read all the instructions before performing any of them, and the last instruction is to do nothing. Arguably kids still have to work for that though, reading 100 steps takes time.

Having a 48-page book and taking 3 days to read it would be more typical for a 5th-grader's experience, so I doubt that part would trip them up.

I was reading books with three digit page counts (and getting banned from them because they were "too adult for me") when I was a third grader. Are kids really reading 48 page books as a 5th grader?

Is "1/4 of a book" such a jump from something like "I read half of the book"?

I would say no, but if you're going to measure out an eighth of a book, I'm going to question if that book should be measured in pages or chapters. But even if I measure the book in chapters, I can understand the concept of pages.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

Yeah, we need to make school even easier, there's some stupid kids in each year that aren't passing. Lower the bar!

Everything should be simple as possible, but not simpler. And t that man who said that? Albert Einstein.

Seriously though, over complicating for the sake of over complicating is what idiots do to impress other idiots. If you can't explain something simply then you don't understand it.

No wonder the chinks and poos are taking your job.

Never had to risk your life on shitty Chinese architecture, huh. You goto the bug men for cheap shit, not quality manufacturing. A culture of "saving face" is why you get manufacturing defects in all their products because they are too culturally scared to ask for clarification.

 

[Seventh Star]

30/5 = 6 so 1/8 of the book is 6 pages
6*8 = 48 pages total because there are 8 1/8ths in a whole.

Oh I fucked up with 30/5. Close enough.

ITT: A lot of niggers who hate math.

I'll be fair to people who find this problem bullshit, these kind of ratio problems are more annoying than anything related to studying functions.

 

[Stoneheart]

It doesn't scale. You can use blocks to learn counting and probably trivial addition and subtraction, but once you get to larger numbers or any kind of multiplication or division, it becomes completely impractical.

Being able to conceptualize these things mentally is fundamental to being able to understand them at all, not some optional "learning modality".

yeah but we are talking about small kids and their brains work different. working with visuals helps them alot.

Think what is tripping people up is using fractions to describe amount of a book you read.

how do you describe the amount of a book you read?

 

[Johnny Salami]

It doesn't scale. You can use blocks to learn counting and probably trivial addition and subtraction, but once you get to larger numbers or any kind of multiplication or division, it becomes completely impractical.

Being able to conceptualize these things mentally is fundamental to being able to understand them at all, not some optional "learning modality".

I actually once thought a kid math using an abacus since the heaven (top beads) were used as a multiplier. I thought him a few different multiplication tables like that. I do think people learn in better ways and schools focused more on teaching towards girls than anything else, but that doesn't excuse the basic math literacy

 

[melcarba99]

Try being the student that weasels out of doing any work by inventing variables out of nowhere, especially before variables officially exist. Unless the teacher isn't allowed to fail you because mommy is on the school board or you're a niglet, you aren't going to get very good grades for answering every math problem with a rubber stamp that says "IMPOSSIBLE TO SOLVE; PROBLEM WAS NOT STATED TO BE IN BASE 10".

I've had a class where every single solution started with the phrase "SRS: Not given, but we shall assume that it is one."

Even when the statisticians are giving us junk data, we were forced to take the path of most work; teachers would sooner make students make an ASS out of U and ME than they would allow a student to skip a problem*.

And if a kid got to February without realizing how much teachers like making kids work, they're too stupid to even be in school.

*Fine print: There is an exception to this rule, the assignment where you have to read all the instructions before performing any of them, and the last instruction is to do nothing. Arguably kids still have to work for that though, reading 100 steps takes time.


I was reading books with three digit page counts (and getting banned from them because they were "too adult for me") when I was a third grader. Are kids really reading 48 page books as a 5th grader?


I would say no, but if you're going to measure out an eighth of a book, I'm going to question if that book should be measured in pages or chapters. But even if I measure the book in chapters, I can understand the concept of pages.

No, its badly written. Dont excuse the teacher giving incomplete instructions.

 

[VargReallyDidNothingWrong]

Seriously though, over complicating for the sake of over complicating is what idiots do to impress other idiots. If you can't explain something simply then you don't understand it.

There's a place for "keep it simple stupid" but this is not it. You need to challenge kids in order to make them learn something. Letting them stay in their comfort zone doesn't teach them anything.

Not that this question is hard to begin with.

 

[Matt Damon]

I actually once thought a kid math using an abacus since the heaven (top beads) were used as a multiplier. I thought him a few different multiplication tables like that. I do think people learn in better ways and schools focused more on teaching towards girls than anything else, but that doesn't excuse the basic math literacy

Absolutely. There's a difference between illustrating initial examples of multiplication to a child to give him a concrete idea of what it means and a grown-ass man saying "I can't do a fifth-grade math problem if I don't have objects to count because I'm a visual learner".

 

[Fomo Hoire]

how do you describe the amount of a book you read?

Percentages, because my ebook reader uses percents.

I would not recommend using my method for school math problems.

 

[Aidan]

As a minor PL I once worked at a stand where they sold pizzas in quarter slices. Even some of the customers were perplexed, but it made up for the price I guess?

Reminds me of when people got confused by a 1/3 pound burger vs a 1/4 burger, defaulting to 1/3 being LESS meat.

Absolutely. There's a difference between illustrating initial examples of multiplication to a child to give him a concrete idea of what it means and a grown-ass man saying "I can't do a fifth-grade math problem if I don't have objects to count because I'm a visual learner".

The "I'm a X learner" stuff is pretty well documented as a misunderstanding at best. For many people who proclaim what kind of learner they are, I think it's just cope. People do have different styles and learn at different rates but it's more complicated than needing images, objects, or words.

You learn math just like you learn anything, by doing it.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

There's a place for "keep it simple stupid" but this is not it. You need to challenge kids in order to make them learn something. Letting them stay in their comfort zone doesn't teach them anything.

Not that this question is hard to begin with.

Challenge them with real world problems then. Not stupidly obtuse word problems.

Nobody fucking go "I read 30 pages, then the next day I read 1/8th of the book" That's fucking retarded and kids who are starting the age of rebelling will just see this as pointless bullshit and hate it for wasting their time when they are already wasting 8 hours a day in the dumbfuck school system.

Holy shit, so many people in this thread need to retake a fucking English course to learn how to read points that were already made.

 

[Changed later]

Wait, were people actually confused by this? I've not done formal math in a good few years but even I could figure out after 2 minutes of thinking. I love math I don't understand why people groan when they see it, there's nothing ambigious or open to interpetation - it simply is.