It is entirely possible and his answer was correct. Question was phrased incorrectly, if the teacher wanted an answer “it is not possible” he should have said both pizzas were the same size.
Not only that, the two statements in the premise are simply given. How is the child to know one of them is false? At that point, why not say Marty ate more than Luis and therefore the fractions must be different? Maybe the fractions are wrong and Luis ate more.
Just an absolutely terrible question if that’s supposed to be the answer. I’d guess the teacher didn’t write the question and didn’t understand the answer.
A third option is that there is a third pizza eater who also ate 4/6th of their pizza and gave 2/6th up Marty in exchange for the 2/6th Marty didn’t eat.
Or yeah maybe it was a larger pizza.
In my experience this is how it feels to communicate as an autistic person
Most threads on here remind me of that
Interesting, I’m autistic and what frustrates me here is that the question specifically asks you to posit “How is it possible” and the teacher insists that you’re supposed to just say that it’s not. Makes me want to just Calvinball the whole damn exam. 5 + 7, what is the answer? Purple. Obviously.
I’m not autistic but agree that the kid gave the correct answer and the teacher is wrong.
If that had happened to my kid the teacher and I would have had at least one meeting.
And it’s not even some crazy stretch to make the premises work. Like if it had said the pizzas are the same size, I’d have to try to come up with something ridiculous to meet the requirements of the question, and would probably just leave it blank. But people order different sized pizzas every day.
The “correct” answer contradicts the requirements set out in the question.
Am I autistic? Or do I just have basic reading comprehension?
If the “correct” answer is valid, so is “actually neither of these people exist”, because we clearly aren’t expected (or allowed!) to accept the premises for sake of argument.
lol this is actually a golden answer and that is why we need better teachers
Marty ate some of someone else’s pizza
Take that to the principal, stupid teachers shouldn’t teach
The principal is not necessarily any smarter than the teachers. Often it’s the opposite.
Reminds me of the time when I got send to the principle for saying “fuck you” during class. I was saying it to a classmate, but the teacher felt it was directed at her.
Anyway, the principle (herself a German teacher, this happend in Germany) gave me detention and wrote a letter to my parents, saying it was because I made a sexist remark towards a teacher.
My Dad wrote back explaining the difference between a sexist and an obscene remark. They canceled my detention and I never heard about it again.
I was once called down to the principal’s office and told I would be expelled from my Catholic school because in spite of my catholic upbringing, I was an atheist (in the US, at a time when this was obviously unconstitutional, given that the school accepted non catholic students of other religions). They called my dad and had me wait in the hall outside the principal’s office. For context, my dad’s an agnostic who doesn’t harbor any positive views towards the Catholic Church, but is a huge fan of educators and would always side with the teacher, no matter how unfair they were being.
My dad went straight in without acknowledging me and spoke with them inaudibly for about a minute, before the secretary came out and sent me back to class. I never heard anything about it from the school again and when my dad got home, he just said I didn’t need to worry about it. Decades later, he still won’t tell me exactly what happened, but I honestly think he might have forgotten and doesn’t want to admit it.
Das ist echt krass xD Dein Papa hat vollkommen Recht
… or have a bit of empathy and talk to the teacher like a human.
The teacher is the one who’s confused here. The kid is entirely correct.
The question is stupid, but the kid’s answer is still wrong.
How is it wrong?
It’s a basic assumption in these word problems. For instance, when they ask you to compare 2/4 and 2/8, you know that you can transform 2/4 to 4/8 and see that it’s greater than 2/8 (0.5 > 0.25). It’s a basic school program, there are no tricks here. It’s a pure math exercise.
At no point does the question say that the pizzas are the same diameter.
It’s a basic assumption in these word problems.
When the question is “How is it possible?” then basic assumptions go out the window.
It’s a pure math exercise.
No, it even days “Reasonableness” above the problem.
Within the paramters of the question the kids answer is reasonable and correct.
I guess your math teacher failed you too.
No, they’re correct. You just fail logic so hard that you think math can erase a lie…
I’ve never seen so many people who are proud that they don’t understand an elementary-school level math, this is hilarious.
You’re the dope that doesn’t get the math.
4/6 x > 5/6 y
x > 5/4 y
Where this relation holds the statement is consistent. I think you should revisit some basics.
What people are trying to tell you is that when you’ve studied Logic at University level “basic assumptions” in elementary school level math aren’t always what they seem to be.
I agree it’s not very relevant though, seeing as we know what level this particular math question is at.
4/6 of an extra large pizza is more pizza than 5/6 of a personal pan pizza. How are you struggling with this?
Sure buddy.
There is literally a trick if they’re asking how it’s possible and it’s actually not. The kid is right. If we’re just ignoring all the words to look at the numbers why even have word problems? The point is to apply math to situations and that’s what the kid did. Nothing provided in the question contradicts his answer. The teacher’s an asshole.
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 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
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
Maybe it’s not smaller, just farther away?
Reminds me of the Homestar Runner one where Marzipan kept saying this the whole episode.
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.
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.
But could he draw red sides with blue ink?
You can’t draw a right triangle with those lengths, but you can draw A triangle with those sides.
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…
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.
Also what teacher uses a green felt tip pen?
I can’t find it now and I do not think it really applies here. But someone stated that being high IQ could lead to academic problems as the high IQ learner would understand or see things that the professor could not causing the professor to mark it as incorrect.
I guess this is the idiocracy version of it.
A good teacher sees being corrected as a learning experience, and encourages their students to question them respectfully.
Bad teachers see it as a challenge to their authority.
I think this would more likely be an overworked and underpaid situation.
If I were an overworked teacher, I’d still rather award the point. Just throw down a checkmark and move on. I don’t need to write an explanation, and the kid/parents are not going to complain.
Oveework/burnout being a matter of not thinking straight while grading, especially after a day of working with children.
Not trying to make a steering defense here, just sayng i could see how this could be poor judgment.
If I ate 1/4 of my pizza and my gf ate 1/1 of her pizza, but the hidden context is mine is from Costco and hers is from mod, who ate more pizza
Was the costco size a cheese pizza, or pepperoni?
Actually a kilogramme of feathers is heavier, because you have the weight on your conscience of what you had to do to those poor birds to get all those feathers.
The statement and the question do not make any kind of sense. Would make more sense to ask who ate more pizza when one ate 2/3 and another one ate 3/4 of an equally sized pizza.
Marty’s pizza is larger. 4/6ths of a 3kg pizza is more than 5/6ths of a 1kg pizza
The statement and question make perfect sense. The kid has the only “reasonable” answer.
