Posted on 01/11/2022 7:58:27 AM PST by SouthernClaire
"Kids reportedly have no difficulty with the train problem, but adults aren't faring so well. The puzzle was designed for the fresh eyes of 6 and 7 year olds, so maybe all of us grownups are just overcomplicating things!
"Check out the problem below, and let us know if you were able to solve it!"
There were some people on a train. 19 people get off the train at the first stop. 17 people get on the train. Now there are 63 people on the train. How many people were on the train to begin with?
(Excerpt) Read more at littlethings.com ...
“How many people jumped off before the first stop?”
How many finally had the sense to ride in the train, instead of on it? How many ceased to identify as “people”?
This is why adults have so much trouble with the answer.
Me/Who/WTF
Did anybody “identify“ as non-human?
“19 people get off the train at the first stop. 17 people get on the train. Now there are 63 people on the train.”
X = 63 - 19 + 17
I struggled with word problems in 4th through 6th grade. Some of them were very complex. Then I took algebra and it all became so easy once you got all the words out of the way. Word problems got FAR worse when they started throwing in extraneous and misleading information. That was great preparation for mechanical engineering.
It’s straight up, Ken. No births, no one blown to bits ... on that trip, anyway.
Because there are adolescent Democrats inhabiting the bodies of adults.
63-17+19 = 65
Why is this hard for people? Wow.
I love trick questions. One of my favorites, which needs to be told, goes like this:
An empty bus (except for the driver) pulls up to the first stop. Two people get on. At the next stop, six people get on. Then eight peolpe get on, and two get off. Then seven people get on. At the next stop, three get on, and five get off. At the next stop, Three get on and one gets off.
Question: How many stops did it make?
Very rare than anyone gets the right answer.
> She was stumped. <
I will defend the clerk in that instance. I taught for many years in public schools. The latest fad is calculator work only. Teachers in my district are actually forbidden to teach things like estimation, the times tables, etc.
The math teachers hate this.
Anyway, we now have a generation of kids who can punch buttons, but cannot do simple math in their heads. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of the idiot math supervisors, and the school boards who hire them.
I need to remember that one!
Using some complex Pythagorean math and the back of a napkin I came up with 65...
It took me 10 dang minutes.
My logic:
(And remember I’m an idiot...)
63-19+17=61
LMBO
A different (but not my) interpretation is to infer the question asking for “How many people were on the train to begin with?” as meaning, “Of all the people on the train now, how many specific individuals were also on the train before it arrived at this station?
Answer = 63 - 17 or 46.
The 17 were not on the train at the beginning. They just boarded.
Best
Ohhhhh. That kind of stupid DOES hurt.
My sister teaches math to middle school kids in Baltimore. Because of a serious math teacher shortage, she is teaching a math class to high school seniors as well. They are 17 and 18 years old (probably a couple of 19 year olds in there, too).
Most of them cannot take a data set and determine if the data are linear. Half the class still asks “what is a function?” Some asked “What is linear?” Maybe ten percent can structure the data, examine it, and tell if it is linear. Note that this is simple ordered pair data [(1,1), (2,2), (3,3)] or [(1,2), (2,4), (3,6)]. No linear regression and correlation coefficients are required.
It is absolutely staggering how downright stupid these kids are. But they don’t worry because mama gets her “paycheck” from the government every week and they will, too.
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