28 June 2023 , 16:48
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Let's be honest, most of us completely forgot everything we'd ever learnt in our maths lessons the day after we sat our final exams. And unless you have a job that requires you to keep up to date with your knowledge of fractions, ratios, and algebra, there's a rather large chance you've never needed to use those skills in your day-to-day life.
So, when adults on the internet were given a children's maths question to work out, many of them were left completely stumped, with no idea how to work out the complex puzzle to find the right answer.
Can you solve it?
The question, which was posted to a forum on Reddit, posed a real-life scenario to children about a boy named Klein who was reading a book. With the use of some fractions, children then had to work out how many pages Klein's book had.
The question left many adults stumpedA picture of the question shared to the Mildly Interesting forum read: "Klein read 30 pages of a book on Monday and 1/8 of the book on Tuesday. He completed the remaining 1/4 of the book on Wednesday. How many pages are there in the book?"
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The poster of the question said it had appeared in his brother's mock exam and explained that he is in the 5th Grade in the US, which is around the equivalent of Year 6 in the UK, making the question suitable for 10-11 year olds.
And although the question was designed to test young minds, many people in the comments of the post were left stumped as they confessed they would "fail" the exam if they sat it today.
One person wrote: "Today I learnt I would fail fifth-grade maths."
While another said: "I'm probably a bit dramatic here but the way this problem is worded/organized is infuriating."
And a third posted: "5th grade me would not get this. Mid-40s me barely gets it."
So have you managed to work it out yet? We're about to show you the answer, so if you don't want to know how to work it out, look away now!
Several people were quick to comment that you can work out the answer easily by adjusting the fractions, as 1/4 is the same as 2/8, meaning that the book is a total of 30 pages plus 3/8.
So, one full book minus 3/8 is 30 pages, which means that the remaining 5/8 of the book not included in the initial fraction is also equal to 30 pages.
When you know that 5/8 = 30, you then need to divide 30 by 5 to give you the value of 1/8. Most of us will be able to work out that 30 divided by 5 is 6, so now all that's left to do is multiply 6 by 8 to give you the value of 8/8, or the whole book - making the answer 48.
One user summed it up when they wrote: "1/8+1/4=3/8, so 5/8 is 30, meaning 1/8 is 6. 6x8 is 48."
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