Tricky homework question for seven-year-olds leaves parents 'questioning sanity'
A mum was forced to take to social media for help after admitting her seven-year old's maths homework had left her 'questioning her sanity' such were her struggles to help
One of the most frustrating aspects of parenting can arise when you offer to help your young children with their homework from school – only to find it's too tricky for you to solve too.
That was the case for one confused mum, who took to Reddit to share a page from their primary school-aged little one's maths book. "My seven-year old's homework is making me question my sanity," she confessed in the CasualUK subreddit.
The fraction-based question required her child to spot a mistake in a diagram that saw a whole number broken down into eight eighths. It read: "Eva is working out what fraction is shown on the number line. What mistake has Eva made?"
One Reddit user was quick to voice their frustration too, penning in response: "What's up with asking a student to figure out what some other wrong person thinks? Why would you want them to spend time getting the wrong way to do something into their head? This seems more like an exercise for teachers."
They continued their rant: "I don't think I even understand the question, did Eva put the 1/8 markers on there? Is Eva just looking at that atrocity and supposed to work out what errors the creator of the number line made? It's not even clear to me 'what fraction is shown on the number line' means. The number line shows more than one fraction."
Whilst a second confessed: "I've seen a number of these kiddies' maths questions now and the phrasing of the question is infuriating. It's makes more sense to write 'What fraction is shown by adjacent vertical lines with downward pointing arrow heads? What fraction is shown on the number line?' Shown by what? 2 adjacent arrow lines? 3 lines? 4 lines? When I was a kid the maths questions were unambiguous."
Others, however, were on hand to offer the solution, much to the relief of the parent. Dozens of Redditors pointed out that Eva had mistakenly used sevenths instead of eighths - as there are of course only seven gaps between her eight lines.
"It's called the fencepost error and it's been written about for thousands of years," one maths whizz explained. "The Romans needed to know about this so they could work out how many pillars to put around a temple."
Another shared: "A fencepost error (also known as an off-by-one error). Occurs in programming too many times. Imagine the 8 arrows are fence posts and the number line the actual fence - with 7 sections. If the total fence is 1 unit long, then each of the 7 fence sections is 1/7 units long, not 1/8."
And a third person added: "Teaching a valuable lesson here! 'Fencepost error', 'off by one error' whatever you call it this is a very good maths question and shows a child's ability to think."
A teacher, meanwhile, agreed and explained why such questions are important for development. "Standard question in maths," they said. "Helps the child to develop their further understanding of the concept being taught, in this case fractions.
"Finding the mistake (in this case, the mistake is that Eva counted the lines instead of the sections, so got 1/8 instead of 1/7) forces the child to think more logically about the problem being presented, rather than simply asking something along the lines of 'what fraction is shown on the number line?' Source: primary school teacher."
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