A math question aimed at 10-year-olds has left the internet well and truly divided, with many unable to work out the correct answer.
If you thought homework seemed tough when you were at school, it's nothing compared to trying to scramble up all those equations and Pythagorean theorems when you've not given them a second thought for a few decades since you left.
So it's not wonder that frustrated parents sometimes take to the internet to see if anyone else has a clue what the answer to a homework question actually is.
One Reddit user left the internet stumped after sharing a question their fifth-grader brother had been set on their math exam.
Taking to Reddit, they wrote: "A test problem on my 5th-grade brother's math exam," before sharing a photo of the problem.
The question, intended for children between 10 and 11 years old, asked: "Klein read 30 pages of a book on Monday and 1/8 of the book on Tuesday. He completed the remaining 1/4 of the book on Wednesday. How many pages are there in the book?"
The confusing wording of the question left many scratching their heads as they realized they had no idea of the answer.
They took to the comments to write: "TIL [today I learned] I would fail fifth grade math", and: "5th grade me would not get this. Mid-40s me barely gets it."
Others added: "I always think to my self. 'Ugh. People should really be tested with basic skills before they're allowed to go out into society.' And then I see this and realize I shouldn't go out into society LOL!", and: "Damn, I don't know the answer but it must be a small book."
One wrote: "My brain said, nope not enough coffee yet. So I looked at the comments and said I see it now," while someone else simply added: "Man I feel dumb."
A commenter joked: "If you give me the title and author I can figure this out...these numbers mean nothing to me..." while someone else added: "I have a minor in math and at first I was like 'they didn’t give you enough information to solve' until I realized people did solve it and looked at it again. Made me feel like a numpty, but yeah. This is a bit much."
It turns out that the answer is 48, if you break down the number of eighths of the book Klein had left to read after the initial 30 pages he got through on Monday.
One Redditor explained it: "1 book = 30 pages + 1/8 book + 1/4 book. 1 book = 30 pages + 3/8 book. 1 book - 3/8 book = 30 pages. 5/8 book = 30 pages. 1 book = 48 pages."
And despite it being easily solvable when you know how, many people criticized the confusing way it was written, adding: "As a fifth grade teacher, this is a confusing question that I would have omitted. While not really difficult to solve for 5th graders concept-wise, it's framed in a confusing manner that seems like it's intended to confuse students. Even I was confused because it isn't really clear that Klein started the book on Monday. Had that been stated, I wouldn't have hesitated."
Another wrote: "Lot of people coping with their own inadequacies in this thread. This is a fantastic problem for a 5th grader. It is not specifically testing just one thing. It's reading comprehension, ability to construct the problem mathematically, and then solve it. This is what most of our education should be. Wrote memorization is f**king dummmmmb."
Others still believed it was simply impossible to discern an accurate answer from the information given, adding: "Technically it doesn’t say the 30 pages is the rest of the book, so I’d write not solvable," and: "Well it didn’t say he started at the beginning when he read the 30 pages so this is unsolvable."
Did you get it? Let us know in the comments below.
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