In America we have a game show called “One vs One Hundred”, I am aware there are other versions of the show internationally so perhaps you are familiar with it. The premise is that a contestant is pitted against one hundred people in answering a series of trivia questions. With each question the contestants pot gets larger in proportion to the number of people that get the question wrong. If the contestant gets a question wrong they are eliminated and receive no money. If a member of the one hundred ( called the “mob” ) gets a question wrong they are eliminated. The questions cover an array of topics and are multiple choice with three choices.
One of the questions posed on the show I watched last night:
How many six packs do you need to have 99 bottles of beer on the wall ?
a. More than 15
b. Exactly 15
c. Less than 15
The women couldn’t answer the question. You could see on her face that she had no idea of how to even start to figure it out. She ended up getting help to find the answer. I thought maybe it was a case of nervousness that got to her. Then they asked the mob the question, out of what looked like 70 or so people about 50% of them failed to answer the question.
Think about that… 50% of people couldn’t solve a word problem that involved simple division and rounding.
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| Filed under: Misc — Scott @ January 11, 2007 11:21 am |
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I have a hard time with questions like that because I’m semi-dyslexic. Multiplication is no problem, but for some reason, simple devision causes my brain to crash. If you gave me a few seconds, I can multiply 15 a few times in my head and figure it out but I can’t think about it backwards for some reason.
What’s 15 times 6? (90 - That was easy)
Wast’s 90 devided by 15? (Duh… Let me think…)
On the other hand, Geometry was the easiest class I ever took. I couldn’t understand why many of the kids who were doing so great in Algebra were having a hard time with the geometry story problems. Suddenly I was the smartest kid in the class.
But yeah… I’m shocked that 50% didn’t get it. How much time did they have?
I am going off of memory but I believe they have around 60 to 90 seconds. Even if I had counted by six’s and kept track by hand I could have solved that problem in time. It was shocking, my guess is that it was because it was word problem. I have noticed how hard those are for some people. Many people can’t make the connection between how math can be used to solve real world problems.
Yikes! *Shudders* That’s scary.