Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Interesting Math Questions

1) If 2 fish are recommended per ten gallons and a fish tank holds 35 gallons of water then how many fish could I have in the fish tank? I could have zero. I could have 35 gallons of fish. What does the recommendation have to do with anything. And why would I want to maximum number of fish? That's a stupid question.

2) According to the diagram the library wing 1 foot 10 inches by 2 feet 3 inches and is asking how large the dimensions of the new wing are if the length is 50 feet longer than the width? But, it already gave me the dimensions for the wing and it's not even large enough to stand in properly. Does the question want me to add 600 inches to one of the sides? But the question says the diagram of the wing is shown? That's a stupid question.

3) If you're a fish, and your computer is overclocked and you can make a model blush with a really tawdry joke... what was the height of the Titanic? According to Michael McGaughan (The Birth of the Titanic, page 46) the Titanic was 236 feet tall from keel to mast. If you wanted to build the model to scale you'd want to make it 2 feet 6 inches by 8.02 inches but the fact that you could build a non-scale model at 6 inches is as pointless as your computer being overclocked.

School kids are judged by how well they do on these questions. They are part of Holt Geometry questions. Really?

No comments: