A children’s homework question has left people baffled, with many claiming it ‘makes zero sense’. The maths problem has sparked a debate on social media as adults struggle to find the answer, arguing that it’s too difficult for nine year olds.
A Reddit user shared the question, saying: “My nine-year-old was given this math problem. I can’t even solve it. My son is quite gifted with numbers but I thought this problem was pretty advanced for a nine-year-old, right? I tried to solve it (I’m no math geek) but I’m having some trouble. Any thoughts? ” The problem states: “In a number pyramid, each number in the middle and top rows is the sum of the two numbers below it. Below is an example.”
It then presents another number pyramid with three missing values, asking students to determine what numbers should fill the gaps. Social media users attempted to solve the problem, but not everyone was successful. One user commented: “If I were a nine-year-old, I’d use trial an error which is almost certainly the wrong way of solving this.”
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Another added: “To be fair as a 40+ dad I’d still use trial and error. And it wouldn’t matter what method I’d use as long as I got to the right answer…” A third user chimed in: “Am I the only one who went “It can’t be C D or E, because it can’t be greater than 40″? I realise that doesn’t solve it.”
One user commented: “Took me about 10 seconds. I’m no ‘math geek’ either. It is pretty advanced for a nine year old but only conceptually.” Another added: “That is not a question for a nine year old. We did stuff like that between 8 and 10th grade. It is doable, but I don’t think this should be asked of a nine year old.” A different user chimed in: “Actually is pretty simple, I used to play a lot of these games at his age, in a magazine called logic. You don’t need to over complicate things with algebra.”
One more user shared the correct answer, saying: “Wow, every single post is way overcomplicating this, even the highest vote getters. We don’t care what star equals or what heart equals. We just need their sum. The first entry in the 2nd row is clearly 7 + star. Adding the 2 second row cells, 7 + star + heart = 40. Subtract 7 from both sides, and you have star + heart = 33.”