Simple math puzzle intended for 8-year-olds is leaving adults absolutely baffled
The puzzle isn't for those who are impatient
A simple math question for 8-year-olds has gone viral because people just cannot figure it out.
So, as someone who failed math twice, I’m not going to even attempt to do this, but you guys can all try.
While you might remember struggling over your various math tests in school, it seems like kids these days are just getting harder and harder questions to answer- and it’s just not something parents can help them with.
When this parent uploaded a picture of their child’s math homework on Reddit, so many people were caught up trying to figure it out, and the comments pretty much sum up how most of us felt about it.
Advert
The parent posted under the 'homework help' subreddit, and wrote: “Husband and I feel super stupid and both coming up with different answers. Help?”
The question they are referring to is: “Sean makes two pizzas. He gives eight people an equal share of the pizza. How much pizza does each person get?”
Now, it seems so easy, but as the comments can confirm, it is not.
Nearly 1,000 people took part in figuring it out, and they couldn’t agree on what the correct answer was.
Some people said it was ¼ and others claimed it had to be 1/8, so it’s just a mess.
There were also people who became angry at whoever wrote up the homework as they slammed it for being grammatically wrong, ranting: “I'm irrationally annoyed that the problem statement says how much pizza vs how much of a pizza because you have to infer that the unit is a single pizza.
“Why are children's questions written with such vague wording? 1/8 of the total pizza - 1/4 of a single pizza.”
Great question, but I don’t have the brain power to answer that, so let’s look at the comments.
One person wrote: “It’s a trick question. He gives a pizza to share among 8 people. So they each get an 1/8 and Sean keeps one pizza for himself.”
Someone else guessed: “2 pizzas divided by 8 people is 2/8, or 1/4.
“It might be each person gets a quarter pizza--one big slice each--or they each get two smaller slices that are each an eighth.”
Another claimed to be correct, writing: “The only correct answer is 2 slices. Anything else ignores international mandatory uniform measurement units for pizza.”
Apparently, the answer is ¼ as 2 divided by 8 is 0.25.
But this isn’t the first time people have been tripped up when it comes to math.
A puzzle circulated online a while back amid claims that it originates at Harvard University.
According to a post, the question is: "Seven men have seven wives. Each man and each wife have seven children.
"Q: What's the total number of people?"
Did you figure it out?
There are 14 people in the first sentence, and then those seven couples each have seven children.
So that would be 49 children, and 14 parents which brings us to a total of 63 people.
You’re welcome.
Britt Jones