A simple maths problem made for eight-year-old children is leaving people scratching their heads.
A parent, from the UK, uploaded a picture of their child’s Year Three maths homework to Reddit, an anonymous forum website, as they were struggling to understand how to work out the answer.
They posted in the thread ‘homework help’ and wrote: ‘Husband and I feel super stupid and both coming up with different answers. Help?’
The question reads: ‘Sean makes two pizzas.
‘He gives eight people an equal share of the pizza.
‘How much pizza does each person get?’
While the brain teaser may seem easy enough to answer, more than 700 people attempted to take a stab at solving and many of them found the same issue.
Some said the answer was 1/8 but others were adamant it was 1/4.
A parent uploaded a picture of their child’s grade three maths homework to Reddit , an anonymous forum website, as they were struggling to understand how to work out the answer
However, others slammed the question for being ‘grammatically incorrect’ and unnecessarily confusing.
One wrote: ‘Why are y’all saying 2/8 Sure if there was like 1 pizza between the 8. There are 16 slices there. Everybody gets 2 slices if 16/8. Wouldn’t that be 2/16 than 1/8?
‘What’s up guys how is 2 pizzas divided by 8 [people] 2/8? That would mean 4/16 and that would be 4 [people] each having 4 slices.’
Another said: ‘I’m irrationally annoyed that the problem statement says how much pizza vs how much of a pizza because you have to infer that the unit is a single pizza.
‘Why are children’s questions written with such vague wording? 1/8 of the total pizza – 1/4 of a single pizza.’
A third penned: ‘This question is stupid too because each person could have 30 slices if you cut small enough. But I guess no matter what it’d still be 1/4th.’
A fourth commented: ‘Grammar police here: I suspect part of the issue is in the lack of an ‘s’ on the second “pizza” in the question.
‘The numbers involved imply 2/8 while the grammar implies 1/8 ‘8 people [get] an equal share of the pizza (just one).’ 2/2 can’t be the answer, however, with the question being unclear to begin with, it is fair to acknowledge confusion from anyone.’
Technically the correct answer is 1/4 – if we assume that two pizzas are going to be split rather than one. It can be worked out like this:
2 divided by 8 = 0.25 which as a fraction is 1/4.
But it also tripped up some adults who were confused about whether to divide the sum by nine instead of eight.
One wrote: ‘Wouldn’t there be 9 if Sean is getting some, too? That’s what would trip me out. Talks about him giving away pizza, but then it asks how much each person gets (does that include Sean)?’
However, someone replied: ‘The question says he gives it to 8 people. It never says he eats some too.’
This is not the first time the internet has been torn over primary-level maths equations.
Just recently, users weighed on a basic problem that went viral for its difficulty – but only a handful were able to pull off the proper arithmetic.
In order to reach the correct answer, one has to follow PEMDAS – a concept typically taught in fifth or sixth grade under the Common Core Curriculum.
PEMDAS is an acronym for the order of operations to solve an equation.
Damien Scott shared the math problem on X, sparking furious debate among commenters
Anything inside parenthesis (P) should be worked out first. Secondly, exponents (E) should be addressed.
Next should be multiplication and division (MD), but multiplication does not necessarily have to come before division.
The correct method is to address them from left to right as they are written in the equation.
Lastly, addition and subtraction (AS). When only those two operations remain, the sum can be solved from left to right because the order makes no difference.
Below is the equation, give it a try before reading on:
Among X users who were not briefed with a math lesson before tackling the calculations, the most popular wrong answer was 5, which is the solution found when PEMDAS is ignored and the problem is just from solved left to right.
Applying PEMDAS, the first step is to multiply and divide because there are no parenthesis or exponents. After solving 3 x 3 and 3 ÷ 3, the equation becomes 9 – 1 + 3.
From there, some simple addition and subtraction reveals the final result of 11.
