Math puzzle for eight-year-olds stumps adults - but can you solve it?
A simple math problem made for eight-year-old children has left adults scratching their heads.
A parent took to Reddit to share an image of a child's homework, explaining they were struggling to understand how to work out the answer.
The poster wrote: 'Husband and I feel super stupid and are coming up with different answers. Help?'
The question read: 'Sean makes two pizzas. He gives eight people an equal share of the pizza. How much pizza does each person get?'
Over 700 people tried to answer the seemingly simple question, but found they too had two different answers - 1/8 and 1/4.
Meanwhile, 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.'
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