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

 

[Matt Damon]

RIP Norm.

Did I rip off Norm? Damn, I thought I had all his jokes memorized already.

Which is odd given I’m guessing no one(or few people here) are either parents, grade school students or actually work in education. I am and so for that reason my opinion ought hold more weight than the rest of you.

"As a mother, I believe..."

 

[Ishtar]

The point of a math test should be can you solve the problem with the numbers in front of you.

Anything that adds unnecessary difficulty or confusion should be avoided.

 

[Matt Damon]

The point of a math test should be can you solve the problem with the numbers in front of you.

Anything that adds unnecessary difficulty or confusion should be avoided.

That's a fantastic way to ensure your students will be just as incapable as you of doing anything practical with their meaningless symbol manipulation skills.

I weep for the future.

 

[Ogre Magi]

I am not the strongest at Math, but I was able to recall what I needed to do and had solved it within a few minutes. Like others have stated already, this doesn't feel like a 5th grade math question.

Does really make you wonder how lazy/stupid the average person is though.

 

[oh no its pipkun]

The point of a math test should be can you solve the problem with the numbers in front of you.

Anything that adds unnecessary difficulty or confusion should be avoided.

ching chong we chinese now. brute force math rote leads to stagnation.

Did I rip off Norm? Damn, I thought I had all his jokes memorized already.


"As a mother, I believe..."

i'm sure its an old joke but this bit happened a little before he died.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

people who accomplish nothing in life always have trauma about school. 30-40 year olds still gripe about the people that bullied them.

Having trauma about bullies is different than having trauma about school.

You know the trope about being a fully grown adult with nightmares about being naked in high school? Sometimes I think about that and specifically about variants of it.

• What if someone doesn't have those nightmares?
• What if they have those nightmares, but it happens in a different school? Preschool or college?
• What if they're not naked, what if they're in a theater costume?
• What if the nightmare happens at work or church or a family gathering instead?
• What would each of these variants tell me about the person who has them?
• Seriously why is this trope a thing? There's so many other nightmares you can have.

This feels... Similar but different? I have an expectation: School had ups and downs, yes. The average person was not friends with everyone, but whether or not it was bullying depends on how soft they were.

But do I expect people to be traumatized by the classes? The curriculum and learning process? Classes, yes. Curriculum, no. I expect them to be traumatized by maybe a particularly bad teacher instead, a human. Perhaps a teacher with a reputation for putting girls in short skirts in the front row.

Being traumatised by the actual contents of the course - and not having it be tangential content like "penises everywhere" or "some kids died when we volunteered to pick up trash off the side of the highway for environmental science" - is an odd concept to me and I'm still rolling it about in my head.

Am I the only person who wasn't traumatized for life by doing poorly in a class?

It was just school, guys.

I was traumatized by school, not by class.

There were certain aspects of classes that were bullshit and made me a raging anti-semite today, however. Namely that time we watched Jew x Nazi porn, or the time I actually thought about the order in which we were taught history (it was not chronological). I feel like that was only formulative however, not traumatic.

 

[The Last Stand]

The point of a math test should be can you solve the problem with the numbers in front of you.

Anything that adds unnecessary difficulty or confusion should be avoided.

Sometimes, you won't have the numbers in front of you. Sometimes, you'd need to figure out those numbers. In hindsight, I can see where the question is coming from.

 

[Ishtar]

That's a fantastic way to ensure your students will be just as incapable as you of doing anything practical with their meaningless symbol manipulation skills.

I weep for the future.

I’m going to teach history dude. Education should include reading, critical thinking, and so on as much as math. The subjects are distinct for a reason.

ching chong we chinese now. brute force math rotd leads to stagnation.

ngl this is the most autistic reply to a comment I made since I’ve been on Kiwifarms good job.

There were certain aspects of classes that were bullshit and made me a raging anti-semite today, however. Namely that time we watched the jewboy fuck the nazi girl while she moaned that he was "mein fuhrer, mein fuhrer". I feel like that was only formulative however, not traumatic.

Are you sure this wasn’t a porn film shown by and to middle school boys? Or are you just being dramatic because that sounds so fake yet I can’t tell if your bsing for the lols.

 

[byuu]

This seems like a weird case of projection. Which is odd given I’m guessing no one(or few people here) are either parents, grade school students or actually work in education. I am and so for that reason my opinion ought hold more weight than the rest of you.

Maybe when you're in front of a group of impressionable ten year olds and give your prepared lesson, someone will finally believe that you are smart.
But I doubt it.

 

[Matt Damon]

Sometimes, you won't have the numbers in front of you. Sometimes, you'd need to figure out those numbers. In hindsight, I can see where the question is coming from.

It's basically all the time. I can't think of a single practical instance where I was given an equation to solve - that's just not how life works.

You have some real issue and either gather all the information yourself or have it relayed by someone else, much like these word problems.

 

[VargReallyDidNothingWrong]

As someone who is an actual education major(meaning I’m planning on actually spending my life in a classroom) I think the question is dumb.

Your gay appeal to authority is rejected. You are also a bad teacher. And probably stupid.

 

[Seventh Star]

You need dumb questions to prepare you for the even dumber questions later.

Ver archivo adjunto 4607485

Retarded exam with someone named "Sahara" is peak American education.

No you don’t. You need at least two years of either grad school or three to four years or undergrad.

Lol no you don't. You need to know the subject, have patience, and be a good teacher (having many resources to reach out to different types of people).

The point of a math test should be can you solve the problem with the numbers in front of you.

Anything that adds unnecessary difficulty or confusion should be avoided.

nevermind youre retarded

I’m going to teach history dude.

Oh that explains everything. Teaching the subject that amounts to sitting in a fucking chair and reading. No introspection, no logic, nothing.

 

[Culinary Hindenburg]

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.

As for why adults can't help their child with this; illiteracy.

Reading the numbers: 130 million American adults have low literacy skills — APM Research Lab

About 130 million adults in the U.S. have low literacy skills according to a Gallup analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education. This means more than half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 (54%) read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

www.apmresearchlab.org

This means more than half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 (54%) read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

Good job, @VargReallyDidNothingWrong, your math checks out!

More from Reddit.





As for the clarity of the question/real-life applications - I can't be the only one that has to extract the important information out of some coworker's rambling explanation or long-winded email. I can't just reply "I don't get it and it's your fault", I'll be labeled as lazy and incompetent. Anyone ever read research articles? Those can be 20+ pages you need to parse through to find the handful of important sentences and numbers you're looking for.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

Are you sure this wasn’t a porn film shown by and to middle school boys? Or are you just being dramatic because that sounds so fake yet I can’t tell if your bsing for the lols.

It was shown by a woman in a classroom of a public school during regular school hours. Logically I want to say history class, but it's equally likely the teacher in charge was the kind of english teacher that decorated the room with giant prints of suggestive flowers. Neither of the two options I'm considering was a substitute teacher.

Not the whole film was porn, that was like one scene out of the whole movie. I only remember two scenes of the movie, I did not have to remember the movie because we did not read the associated book and we were never quizzed on the contents. The teacher just showed it for "fun".

The other scene I remember also involves Jewish dick.

 

[Mnutu]

Fractions and division were always my weakest point in math. Who would’ve thought it’d be the most important thing to know irl.

It's basically all the time. I can't think of a single practical instance where I was given an equation to solve - that's just not how life works.

You have some real issue and either gather all the information yourself or have it relayed by someone else, much like these word problems.

Proportions in mixed chemicals and basically any fucking recipe you read require you to solve for an unknown quantity.

 

[Johnny Salami]

That's a fantastic way to ensure your students will be just as incapable as you of doing anything practical with their meaningless symbol manipulation skills.

I weep for the future.

biggest problem with out education system is we make teachers who hate and can't math teach math to students. Math should always be thought by a mathematics person, not a liberals arts major who took the bare minimum

 

[Ishtar]

ok honest question if the question were written with just numbers

30x +3/8x=X

What would be lost? The student still has to solve the problem by the same method, the same logic is involved.

Without the unnecessary confusion that trying to ignore your right brain creates.

 

[CuzinEd]

Teach them how to do basic math first. This shit is for people who plan to go to college and most of the population doesn't do that. You will never need this shit. No one working any of the low paying shitty jobs that are left in the country will ever need this.

American public school is a huge waste of time.

 

[Secret Messages]

ok honest question if the question were written with just numbers

30x +3/8x=X

What would be lost? The student still has to solve the problem by the same method, the same logic is involved.

Without the unnecessary confusion that trying to ignore your right brain creates.

I think the point of the question is to activate those braincells and make them realize.. hm, I have a number here that I don't know yet, but I know that I can't figure out this problem without representing it in my equations... Oh! A use for algebra!

 

[oh no its pipkun]

Dont they sell turnkey ciriculums to school districts these days? you read the book and make copies of the question sheets.