A parent has been left utterly confused by a complex maths homework question intended for six-year-olds, admitting it 'doesn't make any sense' and has dented their confidence. Seeking help on social media, the parent revealed that the conundrum had 'severely shaken' their self-belief.
The problematic worksheet, titled 'Looking for Patterns', tasks children with identifying missing numbers in a series of equations. The instructions read: 'Each board is missing three different numbers: square, pentagon, and triangle. What are the numbers?'
One user commented: 'Since this problem is meant for kids I'm not going to tell you to solve it like a regular system of equations. Instead, note that the third line of the first box can be rearranged to look like the first line, and once you figure out that square = 1 the rest becomes trivial.'
A second user offered a simpler method: 'Every single line has one thing replaced with a number, and conveniently every board has one line with each shape missing. I think this is the pattern six-year-olds are expected to find.'
The parent later disclosed that their son had figured it out without using any maths, by adding the missing shape where the numbers were. They said: 'The funny thing is that he figured it out in the end. He didn't do any math to start. He started by adding the missing shape where the numbers are.'
