Mum claims question on daughter's homework is 'impossible' to solve

21 December 2023 , 15:00

1063     0

The question has left people scratching their heads

A maths question set for a class of young children has gone viral on social media because it's left a huge number of adults also scratching their heads. But can you solve it?

Confused mum Dusty Sappington shared a snapshot of her eight-year-old daughter's Izzy's homework sheet online. And it's been baffling parents and students alike ever since.

A snapshot shows one particularly fiendish maths question set for the class of third grade students (aged 8-9), and has racked up more than 800 comments.

Question 44 reads: "Janell had 15 marbles. She lost some of them. How many does Janell have now?" One popular response suggested that the answer would be "< 15" (less than 15), but that can't be right, since it would include minus numbers of marbles - which would be impossible.

Dusty was stumped by the question

So the real answer would be closer to "0 < x < 15": x, the number of marbles, is less than fifteen and greater than zero, since we know she lost "some" and not all "marbles". But given the age of the children, other people guessed that the teacher most likely missed out some key info.

Nursery apologises after child with Down's syndrome ‘treated less favourably’

Sharing the problem on Reddit, mum Dusty added: "To be honest, I'm unsure if it was printed in error or was a question to test her knowledge of less than and greater than, which she has touched on in the past. Being the mother of a third-grader and a fifth-grader, I have seen a lot of homework over the years that has our family laughing at the absurdities, scratching our heads and relying too much on Google."

In the end Izzy, who goes to a private school in the US, ended up just writing a question mark in the answer box. Mum Dusty is yet to see the marked version of the quiz with the correct answer written in, admitting: "I haven't found out the answer, but hope to see her graded paper soon."

Earlier this year, frustrated students have taken to social media to reveal a tricky equation that left them stumped - with some labelling the exam question 'brutal.'

The impossible question was featured in a higher-level test paper for Year 12 students in . Experts agree the maths problem is difficult to tackle, and was designed to test the brains of Australia's most advanced mathematics students.

Miriam Lees, a consultant for the Mathematical Association of NSW, stated she had 'not seen a question like this in an extension 2 paper.' The exam question involved complex numbers, an extension of the real number system that involves combining real and imaginary numbers. See if you can solve it here…

Gemma Strong