This is bizarre. The info provided in the question was that Marty ate more than Luis, the question was how would that be possible given that Marty ate 4/6 of his while Luis ate 5/6 of his. The answer the kid wrote (Marty’s pizza was bigger than Luis’) is the only possible correct answer.
The grader is asserting that the information given in the question was wrong and that “actually it was Luis who ate more pizza”–even though it stated as a premise that “Marty ate more”. How are you supposed to give a correct answer on a test if you are expected to accept one premise (proportion of pizzas eaten) while disregarding another premise (Marty ate more than Luis)? How do you decide which part to disregard? Would they have accepted the answer, “Luis actually only ate 3/6 of his pizza, not 5/6)”? Wouldn’t that be just as valid an answer as “Marty actually didn’t eat more than Luis”?
Agree, this question is such hot shit that I can’t imagine it popping up in any real world maths test
The question is good, how given one smaller and one larger fraction could the person eating a smaller percent still have eaten more total pizza? That’s a fun brain puzzle.
The problem is the teacher.
And by gaslighting the kids, they’re teaching them not to trust their own ability to reason, crushing their critical thinking skills. It sets them up to submit to authoritarianism and go along with obvious lies instead of trusting their own senses and questioning authority.
The title of this post is disappointing. The given answer is sound and it seems safe to assume it was arrived at by thinking mathematically.
Right? He’s rationally explaining how that was possible given the question of “how” it is possible. In my opinion that question was written poorly.
that kid passes my class with honors
the teacher is a moron
Same. Question sucks. Teacher is a tool. Kid needs bonus points for a creative solution.
This always pissed me off about all formal school. They don’t want a good answer, they don’t even want the correct answer. They want you to give them the answer they previously told you to give them, regardless of all other factors.
Real life doesn’t work like that. In reality, the “correct” answer is anything that completes the objective. In this scenario, the answer provided was reasonable, logical and most importantly, it was not incorrect.
When I was in elementary, my teacher said that “Lutetia” was how the Romans called the city of Liege. As an avid reader of Asterix comics, I knew this isn’t true and corrected her and said it was the Roman name of Paris. She insisted that it is Liege. Anyway, the next day, she came back to class and said that she looked it up and that I was indeed correct and Lutetia referred to Paris and gave me a chocolate bar and told me to keep reading comics. Good teacher.
In elementary school our teacher asked us to spell the current year with roman numerals, so I worked out “MCMXCVIII”, which I was quite proud of. But the teacher came back at me quite snarkyly and said it’s much easier to just substract 2 from 2000, “IIMM” duh!
It was only many years later that I accidently learned that he was indeed full of shit and I was right all along.
it’s much easier to just substract 2 from 2000, “IIMM” duh!
For anyone wondering why this is wrong, there are two reasons:
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The roman numeral system only traditionally contains subtractions from the next higher five- and tenfold symbol. So you can subtract I from V and X, X from L and C, C from D and M
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The subtractions only generally allowed one symbol to be subtracted, with a few notable exceptions like XIIX for 18 and XXIIX for 28
Holy shit this is dope!
But how did historians come up with the conclusion that, in the case of XIIX, the Romans substracted from the second X, and didn’t just write 12+10?
Not arguing, just extremely curious
The general rule is that the larger symbols come first in Roman numerals, so 12+10 (22) would be written as 10+10+1+1 or XXII.
If you literally meant the arithmetic 12+10, I’d assume they used some symbol for addition, so it would be written as XII+X, but I can’t say for sure.
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It would’ve been easier to pretend it was 2000 and just write MM
I’m pretty sure people would have caught on to pretending it was two years in the future :)
I had a HS teacher say the the 2nd to 5th richest people were the Walton(of Walmart) family heirs. I knew this wasn’t right because at the time, Steve Balmer(of Microsoft) was the 5th or something. I printed out the Forbes list and brought it in. The teacher coped by saying that if you combined the Walton wealth, it would rank that high. He was a POS teacher for more significant reasons than that though.
I once got in trouble with my math teacher for saying “well if we’re just making things up, then sure [I cheated on a math test while sitting in the front of class where the teacher can see but I was using some kind of hidden code on my t-shirt that was a bunch of Shakespearean insults] . But what about all that Crack you were doing in your car this morning?”
Apparently my "making things up"was a slightly more serious than his. I stand by it. If we’re making shit up, we’re making shit up.
For the record, this geometry teacher was convinced I was cheating in class because I didn’t do homework. Homework was 5% of the final grade for the year according to his syllabus, I hated homework, so I figured as long as I didn’t suck at the rest of the class, I could do 0 homework and pass. I was right, passed with a 94%
In my country, the written final exams include a Q&A section in the beginning of the test, where the teacher and the headmaster are present, and where they present the tasks and students are allowed to ask questions. After that section, the headmaster leaves and students and teachers aren’t allowed to talk for the rest of the test.
I noticed a missing specification in one of the tasks. It was a 3D geometry task, and it was missing one angle, thus allowing for infinite correct results. During the Q&A section I asked about that, and my teacher looked sternly past me to the end of the room and said “I am sure the specifications are correct”. If there was an actual error in the specifications, the whole test would have been voided and would have to be repeated at a later date, for all the students attending.
As soon as the headmaster was out of the room, he came to me and asked where he made the mistake. He then wrote a fitting spec on the whiteboard.
I liked that guy. He was a good teacher.
I always knew someone else knew about the series!
Asterix was pretty popular in the 90s Central Europe. The movies were in theaters, the older ones got prime time slots on TV, the comics were in every book store’s kids section. I remember laughing my ass off in the movie theater at the scene with the bear when Asterix in America came out.
Astérix was also popular in Québec in the same way.
An animated miniseries came out this year too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix_and_Obelix%253A_The_Big_Fight
What do you mean someone else? Who doesnt?
haha, I also got some points in school for knowing that Lutetia is Paris, which I also found out by reading Asterix
Dang, in which country are you talking about Liège in elementary school?
Germany. IIRC the topic was Romans, not Liege specifically.
I suspect many commenters are missing the point, the student’s response can only be the correct and expected answer to this question. Teacher has it wrong.
No. The teacher did not have it wrong. Does not mean the student is right … Marty and Luis both had their own pizza. Marty had a big pizza and “only” managed to eat 4/6th of it. Luis had a small pizza, and “only” managed to eat 5/6th of his. If you want to give a nitpicking correct answer: a single pizza does not have (4 + 5)/6th pieces. x/6th implies the pizza(s) were divided into 6 parts … so: it can only be 2 pizzas.
Yes, it can only be two pizzas. The question is “how is this possible” which is correctly answered by the student. The teacher talking like that’s not how pizza works, is indeed incorrect.
4/6 of a 10” pizza is more pizza than 5/6 of a 6” pizza.
I’ve read this a few times and I’m genuinely not sure I understand what you’re saying.
4/6th is a smaller ratio than 5/6 the only way for 4/6 to be greater would be for the area to increase.
Expressed as percentages it would be 66% (approx) eaten vs 83% (approx) where the person that ate 66% ate more pizza. The only way that’s possible is if the area of the pizza that 66% of was consumed was greater. (Strictly speaking the volume could be at play here too but I’m going to assume they’re the same height for the question).
I genuinely don’t see any way his thinking was wrong, or how this could be answered another way.
I might genuinely be missing something but if so this question is poorly worded.
They’re just doing the same thing as the teacher and assuming the two pizzas have to be of equal size and therefore it’s an impossible situation.
The teacher is fucking stupid. The question says Marty ate more, that is not only possible it is a given.
The teacher is fucking stupid.
The teacher is likely under-trained, overworked, and under-qualified for the class. Common in districts where the focus of the administration is driving down the cost of education rather than delivering the highest quality.
That is, of course, assuming this is a real homework and not some agitprop churned out by a Facebook group or a social media account more interested in generating outrage than education.
With the choice of marker, I’d say its rage bait.
Can confirm. My grad mentor’s grad mentor used green because he’d read a paper that green causes more eye strain and he thought it’d be hilarious to grade in green.
I grade in green because it drives my students nuts.
So you’re not confirming that it’s rage bait but rather that it’s a real graded paper.
I don’t even know anymore. Grading in green is ragebait.
“Under-qualified” for the class? Are we really setting the bar beneath the level of a grade schooler?
Sadly, yes. A third grade transfer student from a good school district might very well be smarter than their teacher. Especially in rural areas.
I agree, the kid is correct. This is the only viable answer.
Not true. Marty could have also eaten pizza that was not his.
No, “Marty ate 4/6 of his pizza”
Which does not preclude him also eating 1/6 each of Martha’s, Denise’s, and Sam’s pizzas.
It does not state that Marty only ate 4/6 of his pizza. Nor that he ate only of his own pizza. It defined a minimum pizza consumption threshold for Marty without further details.
You have to use the variables given. He ate 4/6 of his pizza and the other guy ate 5/6. Saying he ate the other guys pizza would result in a tie (not more) and is not an option. The answer they wanted was “impossible”, the kid gave the only real shenanigan proof viable answer.
This is genuinely baffling. What was that teacher on.
Ah, a teacher that does not comprehend the barometer
Two other right answers:
- Luis’ pizza is at least <whatever is the correct fraction> smaller than Marty’s (which is basically the same answer as the kid’s)
- Marty ate someone else’s pizza besides his own
And, for funsies:
- Luis’ pizza is 50% crust, so it doesn’t fully count as pizza
- Luis doesn’t like pizza and actually fed the dog while nobody was looking
- Marty is many years older than Luis, therefore he has eaten many years’ worth of pizza ahead of Luis
This is completely unrelated but I cannot believe Calandra is a real world name.
The designers of the video game Path of Exile should’ve called their super rare item “Kalandra’s Barometer” instead of “Kalandra’s Mirror”.
correct fraction = 4/5, as in, Luis’ pizza is smaller than the 4/5 (80%) of Marty’s pizza.
Well the question does assign ownership to the pizza, so Marty can eat his pizza then give it to Luis making it his pizza
Teachers that don’t accept an unexpected but true answer are not teaching. The test taker had a correct take, one of the pizzas could be bigger than the other. It was not specified in the question. I am so glad I am out of school
This answer shouldn’t have been unexpected, seeing as how it’s the correct answer.
The test key has the expected answer, which may even be wrong. If the test taker responds with something else, even if it solves the problem, it is not the expected answer. It’s stupid.
It really seemed like my fellow students lost their interest in math as we went through the grades here in the US.
I still remember a kid in 2nd grade who learned how Roman numerals worked because they were interesting. By grade 6, actively detested math.
Curious.
Kid should’ve gotten half credit at the very least.
Why would you ask “How is this possible” when you expect the answer to be “it’s not”?
Teacher got the worksheet from someone else and didn’t know the answer.
Or teacher didn’t even see this, handed it to a high school student and said “grade this stack of papers”
I had that happen several times in science classes in 3rd-8th grade. Eventually I started arguing with the teachers in class, and boy did they not like being corrected.
Sorry Ms Avery, you not knowing that “Pb” is the abbreviation of the Latin word “plumbum”, where we also get “plumbing” from due to its use in piping in rome, doesn’t mean I got the answer wrong. To her credit, she looked it up and changed my grade before the end of class.
Ms hoschouli from 7th grade can get fucked though, a parallel circuit increases amperage load, not voltage load. I knew more about electronics in 7th grade than a college graduate who teaches science class, which in hindsight isn’t that impressive considering it was general science and not electronics specific… But in 7th grade, as far as I was concerned I was hot shit for knowing more than the teacher, and getting detention for calling her out in the middle of class. Never got the grade changed and I only got out of detention because my parents called the school.
I had a teacher mark my answer incorrect because I said women can have hemophilia. They said you can’t because it’s a sex-linked disease. I said sure, but what happens if you have two X chromosomes with that gene on it? Still didn’t get the point. This was in the 80s, and I couldn’t just look it up on the internet and prove how wrong they were.
Because these “teacher is dumber than a child” pictures are always fake. I’ve never seen a teacher write corrections on a student’s paper. Are they doing that for every wrong question on every paper? That would take forever!
You can’t teach if you don’t identify where the students are getting things wrong and correct them. It’s one of the major reasons why teachers deserve so much more pay. My wife used to be a teacher, and she worked 2-3 hours past the end of school correcting students’ work pretty much every weekday, and spent several hours every weekend planning out her lessons for the following week. She got paid significantly less than me working in a basic entry-level 9-5 office position.
Teachers absolutely don’t get paid as much as they should.
Also, I was kinda curious about what states have the strongest teacher unions and surprise surprise, it maps very closely to education quality, with Montana and Massachusetts probably being the biggest outliers.
In the USA maybe, teachers in Germany are paid quite well
Still, here in France it’s fairly common to hear people say teachers are lazy because they have a lot of vacations. In reality they do work more than many other jobs it’s just that they get a lot of “homework”.
My mom was every evening working at least 2 hours and that’s just after work. And as the head of school you already have to leave late your job. So if that’s just a chill job why isn’t more people going for it? It’s because it’s badly paid on top of long hours that can be very exhausting with kids. Also it’s a lot of responsibility to handle to just be in charge of so many children at a time.
So basically, I’m the son of a teacher, I love sharing knowledge but there is no way I will even try to do this job. Well at least not before exhausting most of the other options.
Just think about where you will be in life without going to school. I don’t think my life would be half as comfortable if a succession of teachers taught me how to learn, how to behave socially, how to share, how to argument, how to create…
Right now a lot of countries are beefing up their military and it’s often at the expense of the schools/teachers… Which make me really sad. I expect teachers to be less skilled as time passes simply because there won’t be much people to accept that kind of job so only the “worse” teachers will get it.
Some people become teachers because they love to educate children.
Some people become teachers because they have no control in their life and want to be the boss if something.
I see you’ve met some of my old coworkers.
Are they doing that for every wrong question on every paper? That would take forever!
I work in education in Texas. Yes, they do. And yes, it does. Now, most things are digital, so they have kids make a copy of the Google Doc and then grade that and leave comments on it. But if they have paper assignments, they often leave notes on them. Leaving notes on assignments and tests/quizzes (which is likely what this was) is part of their professional review.
Also, part of their regular professional review is whether or not they’re keeping proper documentation on student behavior. Different tiers of behavioral issues require different documentation/communication. So, not only are they writing notes on tests/assignments, they’re writing documentation on hundreds of students, contacting dozens of parents, creating lesson plans that have to be available in advance for parental review in case any parents want to dispute the materials, and they’re getting regular reviews.
And then, when all the kids are off enjoying summer, the teachers are working their summer job to supplement their shitty pay. And they’re going to mandatory “Professional Learning” courses to keep their teaching certification, some of which they are required to pay from their own pocket to attend.
In San Antonio, we don’t really have any “small” districts, so the numbers in the second paragraph assumes an elementary school of 300-600, middle school of 800-1200, or high school of 1200-2000 students.
I was told in 6th or 7th grade science class that you can’t hear underwater
Lol,
I was ‘taught’ by my 5th grade Geography teacher that Iceland used to be called Greenland, and vice versa and they switched the names during WW2 to “confuse the Nazi’s”. I thought that was interesting but never really took the time to think about it logically. I repeated this ‘fact’ to a friend when I was in my early 20’s and she laughed and called me an idiot. Talk about embarrassing.
Ohio resident for grade school, they did it at 4 different school districts across every grade.
Can’t speak for anyone else.
This happens all the time, at least in Germany. My teachers did it, and I do it too.
The picture is probably still ragebait.
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Because the teacher is wrong and it’s an idiotic question.
The question asks the child to explain how Marty ate more pizza than Luis. “He didn’t” is not an appropriate answer to that question.
We know that Marty and Louis didn’t eat from the same pizza, because Marty ate 4/6 of a pizza and Luis ate 5/6 of a pizza. We also know that Marty did eat more, because it’s right there in the question.
The only logical answer is that Marty’s pizza is bigger, and so 4/6 of his pizza amounts to more pizza than 5/6 of Luis’s smaller pizza.
The question should have been “Marty ate 4/6 of a pizza and Luis ate 5/6 of a pizza. Explain who ate more pizza.”
Because they spent an entire math class period earlier that week explaining to the students what “reasonableness” was going to mean on their next math test, and in the context of (I’m guessing 3rd or 4th grade) arithmetic the important thing they’re trying to teach is that 5/6 is a larger fraction than 4/6. I agree that the question could be worded better (change the last two sentences to “Marty says he ate more pizza. Is this possible?”) but I strongly suspect that the missing context from their class - or maybe even at the beginning of the test - explains enough to get the answer the teacher was looking for here.
Yes, one kid starting with a larger pizza changes the situation, but fundamentally that’s an algebra question, not a “learning fractions” question.
We can understand the context of the curriculum goals and still realize that the question was asinine and the teacher is a dipshit.
You could argue that it’s reasonable to assume that all pizzas are the same size but there are many pizza places that offer different sizes. You could as well argue that this is an attempt to make the kids think outside the box and come up with this explanation. How big a fraction is depends on how much the whole is is a good message you can’t learn too early. Understanding statistics is in large parts this. Many people will throw around percentages of pooling questions without ever questioning the pool of people asked.
I agree that the idea they were teaching was “is it reasonable for 4/6 to be larger than 5/6”, but it was too sloppy to be in a word problem with cultural context. Sometimes if you’re the teacher and a kid stumbles onto a loophole this big, you have to take the L and update your materials for the next year. Just add, “Marty and Luis ordered small pizzas at Joe’s,” and this goes away. This feels like the question writer had been in a groove with drafting more abstract problem sets, and didn’t do a good job when shifting gears into the word problem section.
i can’t fathom this being real, most probably this was made for karma farming or something.
Teachers like this exist. One of my kids had an elementary school teacher like this. Two examples:
- The math assignment was about currency denominations; what coins and bills you need to make up $7.42, for example. My kid answered using $2 bills (uncommon in the US but still printed), as we have them at home. Teacher marked the answer wrong because teacher didn’t mention $2 bills in class.
- The writing assignment was to rewrite the Snow White story from the perspective of another character. My kid, having read a bunch of those “twisted tales” and recently fallen in love with “Wicked”, wrote from the evil queen’s perspective and made her a sympathetic character. Teacher marked her down for “changing the story” without acknowledging my kid’s creativity. Teacher did not back down when we confronted her on this during our parent teacher conference.
(FWIW, in both cases we reassured our kid that they did great in both cases, and that we were proud of them.)
Teacher : draw a triangle with sides of length 1 inch, 2 inches and 3 inches
Kid : but you can’t do that. You get a 3 inch line. Other students proceed to draw skinny triangles.
Teacher : you’re wrong Kid. Everybody else can do it, what’s your problem?
True story.
You can’t draw a right triangle with those lengths, but you can draw A triangle with those sides.Well I’m an idiot. Hey wait what if you add a 4th dimensional axis? Was this children’s school perhaps in 4 dimensional space?
You’re asserting that three colinear line segments, with angles only of 0° and 180°, form a triangle?
I made a goof. I am factually wrong. I pray we all forget this quickly and for whatever being can grant it to grant mercy upon my mortal self.
How? Doesn’t this run afoul of the inequality theorem?
The way it works is I’m actually a moron and am wrong.
Ha, fair. I was concerned you were about to drop some non-Euclidean Cthulhu deep-magic on us.
I mean that DOES sound fun…
But could he draw red sides with blue ink?
It’d work if it were 3, 4 and 5
Also what teacher uses a green felt tip pen?
Commendable for the kid to be thinking outside of the box, and a bit shitty of the teacher for not giving them maybe half a point (because it’s a correct answer, but not the correct/expected answer). The test maker is also to blame - they should’ve taken care to eliminate all ambiguity - it’s a math test after all.
The teachers response is incorrect. It is stated as fact that marty ate more pizza.
Oh, yes, you’re right! I read the question again.
P.S. And if really is a fake/made up test like some other folks claim in the comments, just look at how much of a discussion it throws us into.
The kid’s answer is the only correct answer. It’s not half right, or 5/6 or 4/6 right. It’s the only correct answer that fits the question. The teacher is a moron who has no business in a math classroom except as a remedial student.
Marty could’ve eaten someone else’s pizza besides his own, which would also make it a correct answer. The question didn’t say he ate 4/6 of his pizza and nothing else
I like it!
My wife has pointed out that there is indeed one other correct answer. One kids is bigger – OR, the other kid’s is smaller. TWO right answers.
Those are the same answer, one bigger makes the other smaller
I see you noticed that too ;)
Maybe it’s not smaller, just farther away?
Reminds me of the Homestar Runner one where Marzipan kept saying this the whole episode.
The statement and question make perfect sense. The kid has the only “reasonable” answer.
If you state that Marty ate more as part of the question, you cannot answer in any other way, because it denies mathematical logic here. You introduced a lie as part of the problem, and if I need to decide myself which part of the statement is a lie, I can pick whatever I want, let’s say, Marty didn’t ate 4/6, but 6/6. This teacher should be taken to the gulag.
Yeah, this is answered exactly correctly, and also demonstrates that the child has a strong grasp of how fractions work. 3/4 of 2 is greater than 4/4 of 1, even though 4/4 is a larger fraction than 3/4.
Yeah, that was my point. If everything the question says is true, the only way 4/6 is more amount pizza than 5/6, is that the first one is a bigger pizza. The kid not only understood the logic with fractions and the problem statement, but came up with a really good answer. You can even calculate how much bigger the pizza is.
Teachers accepting only “the right answer” without pondering that kind of thinking, are really just damaging kids. Straight to the gulag.
Pretty sure its a joke and not a real exam.
“Reasonableness” as the heading implies that they’ve been working on whether a word problem makes any sense at all. It’s, perhaps ironically, an attempt to help them build critical thinking skills. Then, elementary school teachers are not all brilliant minds themselves, and even the ones who are incredibly gifted educators are overworked, and their schools are generally underfunded. You get a cheap resource, maybe even a free one, or one your former mentor threw together late one night three years ago, and you can end up with a sloppy question. If you yourself are having a bad moment, or are not particularly talented, or the kid is a known shitass, then yeah, you could overreact and respond like this.
Having just sat with my kid through a year of 5th grade math homework, it is completely plausible that this is a real quiz and a real response. Some of the question writing even in the professionally made materials is just not good, partly because it presumes a laser focus on a single “instructional variable,” despite mandates to teach holistically.
The title being “Reasonableness” makes it pretty obvious that the kids answer is the correct one thats being asked for. Could be that the teacher just found the question somewhere without the answer but it seems more plausible to me that its a joke.
You introduced a lie as part of the problem
There is no lie or contradiction in the problem, what are you smoking? The kid’s answer is exactly correct.
They’re not on about the kids answer. They’re talking about the teacher saying Luis ate more. How? It literally says in the question Marty ate more.
what does this even teach the kid about statements by authority? that it’s all lies and trust nobody?
Marty ate more than Luis, that was she lie, in the problem not the answer. That’s if the teacher is saying the answer isn’t right.
The teacher didn’t write OR understand the question. It’s about reasonableness - that is, not just mindlessly solving math. The solution is that Marty’s pizza was bigger, so 4/6 of that was more than 5/6 of Luis’, smaller pizza.
There is no lie. The teached is just dumb. Or more likely overworked, but wrong nontheless.
This is not that level of reasoning. This is basically 4 < 5 if they’re both over 6. This is introducing fractions… It’s not that deep.
You’re arguing with the teacher.
You miss the understanding that the kids would have been coached everyday for at least a week to look for the fractions and compare them. And not be overly concerned with anything else. The kids aren’t stupid, they know that they have spent the week comparing fractions and that’s what the test/quiz would cover. I would bet very long money that the majority of the students got the correct answer and those that didn’t, simply chose the wrong answer. Still, you do get an oddball answer on occasion. Because young kids are cool like that sometimes. It’s a minor thing to correct as a teacher.
As an adult, you are reading far too much into the question because you want to be angry.
That’s not what it is, no.
Teachers make mistakes, like any human being, and a good teacher can deal with the fact that they made a mistake and that a student found said mistake.
A teacher who insists on being right over being correct is a bad teacher, because a teacher is supposed to teach a child understanding and knowledge, not blind obedience above anything else.
That’s how you end up with a population who agree with the leader even if he tells them the sky is green.
Again, as an adult looking to find something to be outraged at, you are far overthinking the problem. You assume those kids don’t understand what that week’s math lessons were about. And therefore what any quiz/test would be about at the end of the week. All of them would have been coached all week long on what to look for in that quiz/test.
If the teacher was so wrong, explain to me how a majority of the students would have understood that question and been able to figure out the correct answer and provided the correct format? Getting one odd answer on one test/quiz in a room of perhaps 20 students is not indicative of a poorly written question or if a teacher is unwilling to admit they were wrong. Odd answers are just generally an isolated issue, unless this is a repeated problem for this student, which would be indicative of a deeper learning issues. Which is something we don’t know or can’t know in this case.
Your premise would hold value if you knew every student in the classroom got the question wrong or provided the same answer that is shown. But you have no idea if that’s the case.
There are other things in this world that deserve to be outraged about. This particular thing ain’t one of them.
If the teacher was so wrong, explain to me how a majority of the students would have understood that question and been able to figure out the correct answer and provided the correct format?
But did they? How do you know? Have you seen the other students’ assignments?
Most likely, this specific task wasn’t actually a homework task at all but created just for this meme.
But teachers like this exist, and I stand by that that these teachers are wrong. Understanding and actually thinking about a problem are much more important skills than to obey blindly and follow pre-set directions without even reading what the question actually says.
I’d say, a student that answers the question as expected is failing in regards to reading comprehension.
And from my experience, if a question is worded as wrongly as the one in the meme, then half the class will have it wrong and there will be a group of parents at the next parent-teacher conference complaining about it.
I… Um… I’ve been looking at this for a minute and I can’t tell why the answer is unconventional, nor what the fuck the teacher is on about.
The kid answered correctly, it’s not unconventional at all, the teacher is just stupid
It’s fucking dumb. No where did it say the pizzas are equal size. So the kids answer is just as right as her bullshit answer.
No, the kid’s answer is not “just as right”, it is the correct and expected answer. The teacher’s answer is wrong and proof the teacher doesn’t understand the question. The entire point of the question is understanding that fractions of a whole are relative to that whole and you can’t directly compare fractions from different wholes like that. 5/6 > 4/6 doesn’t mean Luis ate more pizza than Marty, it means Luis ate a larger share of his pizza than Marty ate out of his own.
This is not a Maths test. Its a comprehension test for a test card series, the question is titled “Reasonableness”.
But… The teacher is just flat-out wrong. It says right there in the problem that Marty ate more, and then uses that fact as a foundation for the question of “x is true, HOW can x be true”. It’d be different if the question was “someone claims x is true; is it?”
The kid actually answered the question. The teacher’s expected response is basically “no, your question is wrong and I refuse to answer it.”
I’m actually not sure this is real. I’ve had some shitty abusive teachers but even they would be capable of basic logic.
The question asks “How is this possible?”
What they mean to ask is “is this statement true if both pizzas are the same size?”. To test whether the kids can compare fractures. It’s wrongly worded and the reaction is bad. If any of it is real.