Come on then, year 2 SAT maths thing...

[Otispunkmeyer]

Thought this might have popped up on here but anyway:



Seems to be a bit of rukus going on on social media because someone came out saying the answer was 46. Someone also claims the mark scheme says the answer is 46. No proof is provided however.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/09/can-you...

Now depends on how you like to read words as I suppose you could say its ambiguous at the start and that 19 people getting off the train is a red herring.

For me though, considering its a maths question for 6 to 7 year olds I am going to go straight for the simple X - 19 + 17 = 63, rearrange for x, get 65 people on the train before it made its first stop.

Some claim the answer is 46. I've seen 44 and 0 too.

Personally I don't know what the answer is, no one has provided an official one. I am sticking with 65. Very happy to be proven wrong, never to old to be wrong or learn. Its an interesting look at how other people think though.

[marshalla]

They've retracted the "46" answer and now declare that 65 is the published answer.

[BRISTOL86]

I must be missing something. It doesn't look even slightly ambiguous to me, not sure how it could be anything other than 65!

And people deliberately making it look harder than it is by using algebra.

19 get off and 17 get on, so the total has reduced by 2.

So surely the question essentially is asking '63 - 17 + 19 = ?'

Edited by BRISTOL86 on Monday 9th May 17:06

[Otispunkmeyer]

Plenty of people come out with the 46. But I haven't read an explanation yet that makes any sense.

Stuff like:

"The question is 'how many were on to begin with' The 19 that got off at the first stop were on from the beginning. 17 got on to make the 63. So the answer is 63-17=46. 46 (incl the 19) that got off, were on the train from the beginning."

Am I being thick?

[toasty]

The answer is 65.

Any claims that part of the question is a red herring are only made by cretins.

[FredClogs]

The answer is 65.

School, college and university examinations of all kinds (in my experience) very very rarely try to trick people into anything. If people have managed to get anything other than 65 as the answer to this question they're probably not as bright as a 6 year old.

[DIW35]

If 19 got off and 17 got on, the total on the bus at that stop has reduced by 2. If there are 63 on the bus now, there were 63 + 2 on the bus before the stop. So 65. No idea why people are bringing algebra and all sorts of other shenanigans to solve it. It's a simple matter of addition and subtraction.

[marshalla]

DIW35 said:

If 19 got off and 17 got on, the total on the bus at that stop has reduced by 2. If there are 63 on the bus now, there were 63 + 2 on the bus before the stop. So 65. No idea why people are bringing algebra and all sorts of other shenanigans to solve it. It's a simple matter of addition and subtraction.

That's all well and good, but what about the train in the question ?

[FredClogs]

Otispunkmeyer said:

Stuff like:

46 (incl the 19) that got off, were on the train from the beginning."

Aye, 65.