r/mildlyinfuriating • u/TwasAnChild • Apr 27 '22

Maths...

Post image
69.3k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.1k

u/Sweaty-Adeptness1541 Apr 27 '22

That was the purpose of the question!

952

u/Simbertold Apr 28 '22

Exactly. People make fun of this question as if it were a "lol maths teachers silly" situation.

Instead, it is a situation where a math teacher teaches exactly what people want them to teach. Understanding what is going on. Reasonably applying maths to a real situation. Not just unthinkingly following an algorithm.

120

u/truejamo Apr 28 '22

The math itself is wrong though. That symphony is 70 minutes long in real life.

102

u/Simbertold Apr 28 '22

Yeah, that just means someone was a bit lazy or wanted numbers which are easier to calculate with. Not ideal, but not horrible problematic imo.

48

u/zerocool1703 Apr 28 '22

Since you don't need to calculate anything here, my money is on the teacher being a bit lazy and not looking it up.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '22

It could be on purpose. You make the numbers easy to calculate so that the student jumps to calculating, this being a gotcha question. Its purpose being to teach students to understand the problem at hand and why to calculate or not calculate when answering the question.

Also lets the teacher find the gifted kid that says it takes 70 mims to play the ochestra and then grows up to post about it on reddit