math

Smarter than a fifth grader

Last week Leta had a math problem that four different adults could not figure out. It’s one of those hard questions at the end of the page under “Stretch Your Thinking” that I dread every night having to read. She was freaking out that she was going to lose points because she couldn’t answer it, so I took her pencil and wrote, “FOUR DIFFERENT ADULTS ATTEMPTED THIS PROBLEM AND NONE OF US COULD FIGURE IT OUT INCLUDING A STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH WHO JUST FINISHED A COURSE IN TRIGONOMETRY.”

Yesterday I ran into the mother of one of of her classmates and she grabbed my arm and said, “Please tell me you’re going to write a post about that awful ‘Stretch Your Thinking’ problem he gave them last week!” Haha!

Here it is: what an awful thing to do to those kids. AND their parents. AND the confidence of that college student.

Publicly, on a website, in all caps.