A maths puzzle intended for six-year-olds has left parents across the UK scratching their heads after a mother shared it on social media. Tiesha Sanders posted her daughter Summer's homework on Facebook, seeking help with a question about the number 27.
The question asked Summer to write the number 27 in terms of 'tens' and 'ones'. She correctly wrote '2' for tens and '7' for ones, but her teacher marked it as wrong. Confused, Sanders asked the teacher for clarification, who responded: 'Hello this is the new math they have us teaching. It wants her to know that having two tens and seven ones is the same as 27 ones.'
Sanders, who has six years of teaching experience in primary school, expressed her frustration, stating: 'This new maths is NOT it.' Her post garnered over 3,700 comments, with many parents agreeing that the question was unnecessarily confusing. One commenter questioned the logic, while another suggested using equal signs instead of arrows to make the concept clearer.
This comes after another tricky maths problem from a Year 5 test puzzled adults on Reddit. The problem read: 'Klein read 30 pages of a book on Monday and one-eighth of the book on Tuesday. He completed the remaining quarter of the book on Wednesday. How many pages are there in the book?'
Many users struggled with the answer, but a person with a PhD in engineering and applied mathematics stepped in to help. They explained that assuming Klein started reading on Monday, the number of pages could be found by dividing 30 pages by five to get one-eighth (six pages), then multiplying by eight for a total of 48 pages.
