Parents Left Stumped By Exam Question For A 10-year-old Kid

By Haider Ali in Education On 24th August 2023
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Image: annabotting/Twitter

Are you more intelligent than a 10-year-old?

The answer might be "no" if they are successful in answering questions like the one you are about to attempt, but give it a shot and see if you can figure it out.

Whether exams are becoming simpler or whether the educational system is becoming more effective at teaching is a topic of much controversy and discussion.

Exams were probably simpler in the past, but given what today's youngsters must contend with in their exams, it may be time to serve up some humble pie.

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Sky News host Anna Botting shared her daughter's math homework and a devilishly challenging exercise, leaving a lot of parents confused by one particularly challenging issue.

The question read: "At the beginning of the day Hasim counted his money. He gave his brother 1/3 of his money. He spent $15(£12) on a present for his sister. He then counted what he had left and it was half what he had at the beginning of the day. How much did he give his brother?"

Try to figure it out for now; we'll let you know the answer a little bit later.

Keep in mind that the question doesn't ask how much money he had initially; rather, it asks how much the third of the money that he donated to his brother was worth.

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Credit: Twitter/@callum_nowacki

People were truly confused by this one as they attempted to use their adult brains while admitting it was "definitely difficult for a 10-year-old."

Many people got the wrong answer because they didn't read the question and assumed they had to figure out the whole amount of the original money, while others said they "can make no sense of that at all."

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Some of those who followed the  'show your method' guidelines busted out the algebra to crunch the numbers and figure out just what the question was asking of them.

If you don't know a number in a question like this, one individual advised you to "replace it with a letter" and keep working on the issue.

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We hope you didn't cheat and just scroll down to this point because if you've made it this far, you've earned an answer and an explanation of how the question works.

The right response to the question is that Hasim handed his brother $30(£24). 

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To figure this out, simply convert the one-third and one-half sums into the same denomination, giving you two-sixths and three-sixths.

Given that Hasim started the day with $91(£72), donated $30(£24) to his brother, spent $15(£12) on a gift for his sister, and had $45(£36) left over at the conclusion of the day, the $15(£12) he spent represented the final sixth of the cash.

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If you were able to answer correctly, you might like to try your hand at another 10-year-old student's arithmetic question.

While some of the questions are simply puzzling, others are snuck in by teachers in an effort to catch their students cheating.