A 5th-grade math question about calculating the number of pages in a book has perplexed a person. The person then shared the question with others by posting it on Reddit and asked students to find the answer.
The question asks the total number of pages in a book, given that a boy read 30 pages on Monday, one-eighth of the book on Tuesday, and completed the remaining quarter on Wednesday.
While some social media users struggled with the problem, others found it straightforward. A Ph.D. holder in engineering who specialized in applied mathematics noted that the answer could be found by dividing 30 by five to obtain one-eighth and multiplying that by eight to get six, and then multiplying six by eight to obtain 48, the number of pages in the book.
Some people found the question challenging, with one commenter noting that it displayed why the game shows that test intelligence is successful.
Another person expressed disbelief that they would fail fifth-grade math. However, some people thought the question was relatively easy, with one commenter pointing out that it looked like any other math problem they had encountered in fifth grade. One person expressed frustration with people's inability to master basic skills before entering society but later laughed at their realization that they could not solve the question.
"You’ve just made me realize why I found so many problems difficult to solve during highschool, they were all like this.. and I was incredibly stupid," wrote a user.
"…why didn’t Klein just read the remaining 18 pages on Monday? ..Klein is lazy," commented another user.
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