Friday, October 17, 2014

283: Ok for a Fifth-Grader?

Three squares of equal but unknown size.


Is this a fair question to ask a fifth-grader?


From a Numberphile video.

5 comments:

  1. Give them a protractor and say estimate to the nearest 5 degrees. Yes.

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  2. It's a fairly standard primary school question, but only in some nations. We posed the question slightly differently, our diagram providing an important hint to bring it to a more manageable level for younger problem solvers: http://fivetriangles.blogspot.com/2014/04/155-three-angle-sum.html

    One irresponsible thing we wouldn't do, though, is create a YouTube video of a single solution, which implies that that method is the "correct" way to go about solving the problem.

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