Marty ate some of someone else’s pizza
reasonableness
Every time this gets reposted, everyone misses this first word.
This isn’t a maths question.
It’s asking the student to read the question and make an observation if it’s a reasonable question and answer.
And with the information provided it’s not.
I’m sorry, what? There is precisely nothing unreasonable about this question. It has a correct answer that can be found with basic logic
Yeah, most pizzerias sell many sizes. Both answers are valid.
In fact, i would argue making an assumption, in this case about size, without declaring it, is in fact less reasonable.
But it’s perfectly reasonable for Marty to order the bigger pizza because he is a greedy bastard.
This is genuinely baffling. What was that teacher on.
Neither is right: written text is not people, and text without people is either right or wrong until someone read. Only people reading can make the text true, also, you’re a moron.
…it’s just a joke, jeeeez.
that kid passes my class with honors
the teacher is a moron
Same. Question sucks. Teacher is a tool. Kid needs bonus points for a creative solution.
This always pissed me off about all formal school. They don’t want a good answer, they don’t even want the correct answer. They want you to give them the answer they previously told you to give them, regardless of all other factors.
Real life doesn’t work like that. In reality, the “correct” answer is anything that completes the objective. In this scenario, the answer provided was reasonable, logical and most importantly, it was not incorrect.
This is bizarre. The info provided in the question was that Marty ate more than Luis, the question was how would that be possible given that Marty ate 4/6 of his while Luis ate 5/6 of his. The answer the kid wrote (Marty’s pizza was bigger than Luis’) is the only possible correct answer.
The grader is asserting that the information given in the question was wrong and that “actually it was Luis who ate more pizza”–even though it stated as a premise that “Marty ate more”. How are you supposed to give a correct answer on a test if you are expected to accept one premise (proportion of pizzas eaten) while disregarding another premise (Marty ate more than Luis)? How do you decide which part to disregard? Would they have accepted the answer, “Luis actually only ate 3/6 of his pizza, not 5/6)”? Wouldn’t that be just as valid an answer as “Marty actually didn’t eat more than Luis”?
Agree, this question is such hot shit that I can’t imagine it popping up in any real world maths test
The question is good, how given one smaller and one larger fraction could the person eating a smaller percent still have eaten more total pizza? That’s a fun brain puzzle.
The problem is the teacher.
And by gaslighting the kids, they’re teaching them not to trust their own ability to reason, crushing their critical thinking skills. It sets them up to submit to authoritarianism and go along with obvious lies instead of trusting their own senses and questioning authority.
This post shows the difference between school and education. The school system is there to get a child to be able to regurgitate whatever the lesson says they should. Education is to develop knowledge as a whole.
It is sad that the teacher was not even able to consider the flawed nature of the question, because they are trained to just see if the student’s answer matches the answer key for the test.
In many cases, the public education system no longer exists to deliver educated graduates. It exists to feed itself – to obtain funding for itself the next year and to support a gradually expanding set of “administrators” that add little to the process.
Look at the effects of “No Child Left Behind”. NCLB pushed test scores above all else. What did we get? A bunch of students that were very good at passing standardized tests. That does not necessarily translate to a better educational outcome. The value in the skill of passing standardized tests plummets rapidly once one joins the workforce.
Marty’s pizza is larger. 4/6ths of a 3kg pizza is more than 5/6ths of a 1kg pizza
The teacher is fucking stupid. The question says Marty ate more, that is not only possible it is a given.
The teacher is fucking stupid.
The teacher is likely under-trained, overworked, and under-qualified for the class. Common in districts where the focus of the administration is driving down the cost of education rather than delivering the highest quality.
That is, of course, assuming this is a real homework and not some agitprop churned out by a Facebook group or a social media account more interested in generating outrage than education.
“Under-qualified” for the class? Are we really setting the bar beneath the level of a grade schooler?
Sadly, yes. A third grade transfer student from a good school district might very well be smarter than their teacher. Especially in rural areas.
With the choice of marker, I’d say its rage bait.
Can confirm. My grad mentor’s grad mentor used green because he’d read a paper that green causes more eye strain and he thought it’d be hilarious to grade in green.
I grade in green because it drives my students nuts.
So you’re not confirming that it’s rage bait but rather that it’s a real graded paper.
I don’t even know anymore. Grading in green is ragebait.
I agree, the kid is correct. This is the only viable answer.
Not true. Marty could have also eaten pizza that was not his.
No, “Marty ate 4/6 of his pizza”
It does not state that Marty only ate 4/6 of his pizza. Nor that he ate only of his own pizza. It defined a minimum pizza consumption threshold for Marty without further details.
You have to use the variables given. He ate 4/6 of his pizza and the other guy ate 5/6. Saying he ate the other guys pizza would result in a tie (not more) and is not an option. The answer they wanted was “impossible”, the kid gave the only real shenanigan proof viable answer.
Which does not preclude him also eating 1/6 each of Martha’s, Denise’s, and Sam’s pizzas.
So this was a trick question? Because the student’s answer is correct. That’s the only way it’s possible. Was the answer supposed to be that it’s not possible? I’m a grown adult and I find this question unclear so I’m surprised this was asked to a young child in this way.
Well the teacher’s answer is flat out wrong which doesn’t surprise me at all.
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.
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.
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.
Take that to the principal, stupid teachers shouldn’t teach
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
The principal is not necessarily any smarter than the teachers. Often it’s the opposite.
… or have a bit of empathy and talk to the teacher like a human.
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.
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.
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.
The teacher is the one who’s confused here. The kid is entirely correct.
Your fault for not listing the size and list of toppings for both pizzas, one could be a small personal pizza size with just cheese and pepperoni and the other a full huge net Yorker sized one with double of everything.
Shit, pne was probably a pizza bagel and the other a Pizza Hut Bigfoot.
Just to prove the point in an absurd way.
Or even a step further, the measurement is in volume not area. This could be a Chicago style pizza where 1 slice equals 2 slices of New York style.
