Posted on 07/31/2012 9:00:37 PM PDT by grundle
The contestant, the studio audience, and the online audience all got this easy math question wrong.
I don’t think this is so much a reflection on any of them, as it is on the horrible state of math education in this country. If this had taken place in Norway or South Korea, I think the contestant and both audiences would have gotten it correct.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbX44YSsQ2I
B. 25 I knew the answer as soon as they gave it as an option. The nuns at St. Mary’s in Strykersville would have been so proud of me.
16 is the product of two smaller squares. It threw me off for a bit, but 25 is the answer, 9 and 16
I doubt that most of the people surveyed, nor the contestant, even understood the question.
Well, I always knew AOL users were stone-dumb. But an audience of random people?
For those of us who are on ancient dial-up and can’t view video, why not just post the math question?
This one was autonomic for me just from the 5^2 in it because of triangles. a^2 + b^2 = c^2. In math classes, I came to learn to look for anything 3,4,5. Kind of like the other rule of anything divisible by 3, all of the digits added up are divisible by 3, so 132 is divisible by 3 because 1+3+2=6 which is divisible by 3.
I think you nailed it: most people apparently cannot distinguish the words “sum” and “product”. I weep for this country.
Which of the following numbers if the sum of two perfect squares?
a) 16
b) 25
c) 36
d) 49
Answer: b) 25
Oops! I meant “is” not “if.”
Thank you for providing the math question.
Really.
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