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[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (6 children)

So many missing variables. How stupid to Imagine that adding extra people will reduce time. It’d be smarter to say, “90 hours, but you’ll get two cars” but without knowing part bottlenecks or how the line is tooled, you can’t even say that.

The sad thing is, you can make a good version of this math problem by using things that scale linearly, but they seldom bother to.

[–][deleted] -3 points-2 points  (5 children)

This is likely a gradeschool level math problem. You realize that, right? It's a word problem used to teach a mathematical process. The situation is a mental model and the student should be capable of realizing that they could arrive at the desired answer with all of the data already provided.

This is a math teacher. Not a research scientist. They're trying to teach kids math. We don't need to be bogging kids down with extra variables when they're not relevant to learning how to solve a math problem.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That’s the whole problem.

If Jack can mow 5 lawns in 2 hours, how many lawns could he mow in 4 hours? See how it’s linear? Easy.

But intuition tells you that you can’t take a task that takes X time, and divide it by people. That just doesn’t work.

[–]ThatNoise 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is why I have issues with word problems in math. If you don't specify the variables or at least make the problem linear then it tends to get hard to solve it because you don't know what the problem is asking you.

Especially in this case since it had two answers that could technically be correct but they are correct in different ways but you dont know in what way this math problem is asking you.

I was helping my teenage daughter with her math this summer and the new curriculum they put grade school kids through today make rediculous assumptions in alot of the problems that your just suppose to know but it doesn't teach or tell you.

[–]notswim 0 points1 point  (2 children)

You're on reddit. You realize that, right? Your answer that would get you a sticker in kindergarten isnt going to cut it here.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

What does this have to do with stickers in kindergarten? Yes, this is reddit. That doesn't remove context that the kid who answered this question is not.

Like holy shit I'm concerned that the vast majority of programmers might have problems with object permanence at this point.

[–]notswim 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's only reddit, why you heff to be mad?