This Math Problem About Pizza Is Making The Internet So Very Confused And Irate
The internet is full of brain teasers and viral puzzles that a lot of people lose their mind over because they want to figure them out. Some, such as the “What Color Is This Dress?” or “Which Shoe Polish Goes With This Dress?,” have no correct or incorrect answer, but people enjoy discussing them. Well, there are also the real issues and one is a school math problem having to do with pizza, and it is causing sheer outrage from the internet.
A math word problem dealing with two men and how much pizza they’ve eaten is driving the internet quite insane. While the problem itself isn’t that difficult to figure it out, the child’s answer and then the outrageous response by the teacher is what has many scratching their heads.
The problem was first posted on Reddit by a user known as “xtreme1461” just a few days ago, and it has since started a rather lengthy war of words. Many are giving their own theories about things, but the answer given by the student and the instructor’s comeback is just — well, read on.
Here’s possibly the most infuriating math question ever about pizza: https://t.co/oYcAKp4PTM pic.twitter.com/4PwjaIfe5G
— A Plus (@aplusapp) March 24, 2016
Looking at the problem itself, it really isn’t a very complicated or overly in-depth math problem. It reads as follows.
“Reasonableness: Marty ate 4/6 of his pizza and Luis ate 5/6 of his pizza. Marty ate more pizza than Luis. How is that possible?
Looking next at the response of the student taking the test, the answer given makes quite a bit of sense and is actually correct.
“Marty’s pizza is bigger than Luis’s pizza.”
The instructor puts a big green “X” next to the response of the student and that obviously indicates that the answer given is incorrect. From there, the instructor gives a reasoning that the student is not correct and adds why that is.
“That is not possible because 5/6 is greater than 4/6 so Luis ate more.”
At this point, the entire internet looked at the math problem about pizza and the response from the student and then the instructor and became confused. Shortly after that, people became irate at the response from the instructor as well as the poor English skills of said instructor.
So, is it really not possible then that Marty ate more than Luis? Is it just not feasible or logical whatsoever?
Nowhere are the sizes of the pizzas eaten by Luis and Marty given so it isn’t known if there is one small and one large, or two larges, or one medium pan pizza and one medium thin crust pizza. A Plus details that the facts given are few, and the student answered based on what that they had to work with.
“A fraction is a unit of measurement. A pizza is not. There is no uniform size for a pizza. It is not an absolute unit.
“The question does not explicitly state that the pizzas were the exact same size. The only information available are two statements and a question that, as worded, requires an outcome of possibility based on the preceding statements.”
In all reality, the only way that the response from the instructor can be correct is if the second statement of “Marty ate more pizza than Luis” is incorrect. It’s hard to tell someone that something is “impossible” when logic was used and “reasonableness” in order to determine an answer.
A Reddit user known as “akartherder” brought about an interesting point though. Perhaps the teacher taught lessons leading up to the question that had everyone know the pizza sizes were the same. If that was understood and the student simply ignored that fact, then the instructor is correct, and yes, the student’s answer is impossible.
There are a lot of assumptions in this entire thing and it being posted online with more info from student, instructor, or the situation leaves a lot to the imagination. The math problem is tearing up the internet right now, and it’s hard to know how things should really be taken from it.
[Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images]
