'Throw it in the bin': Year 2 maths homework about pizza gets same response

"Presumably this is is designed to imprint the principle of equivalence rather than expecting any detailed algebraic manipulation," didn't help, either.

A dad has been very confused over his daughter's second grade math homework, which focused on how best to equally divide a series of pizzas.

"I was reviewing my daughter's homework as we typically do after she completes it and wasn't sure if she was doing it right," he told Newsweek.

"Upon reading the problem I actually found myself puzzled."

I hear you, mate, and I haven't seen the worksheet yet.

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The question, posted alongside the dad's query on Reddit, presented two different drawings of a pizza.

One was drawn into thirds while the other was drawn into quarters. "Three people want to share the pizzas," the question on the sheet read. "What fraction of the pizza would each person get?"

At this stage I would have burst into tears, but this dad gave it a go.

"While the question seemed straight forward, it wasn't clear what was expected, mainly because there were five pizzas to solve [in total] and technically the answer should have been the same for each, only the drawings being different," he told Newsweek. 

"Between having doubts and my daughter explaining her lessons I decided to get other perspectives from the Reddit community."

Reassuringly for the dad, others found the homework confusing, too.

"This is a terribly confusing exercise," one user wrote.

But another replied: "I think it's magnificent. It helps get at a basic concept: that a whole thing is a whole thing. I dabbles in potentially complex fractional maths - but if you understand the first principle, you can entirely avoid any calculations whatsoever."

A third then added: "Yes but that's assuming you can create more slices. And it didn't say they want to share the whole pizza or that the shares have to be equal. If there were a number of slices, even of different proportions, but you could arrange them in a way to give an equal part to everyone, then I would agree with you. I don't understand how you're supposed to know you have to cut more slices."

Then there was this take: "There is absolutely no requirement to cut slices. The question says nothing about slices."

Another came back to them asking: "Exactly. So why show a pizza cut in four slices ? All I'm saying is that the instructions and the data can be confusing."

(Meanwhile, I couldn't even follow the discussion about the homework.)

The dad posting the problem to Reddit said he was "quite surprised" by how much debate it seemed to spark. "But it also affirmed my belief that there was indeed ambiguity around the problem and it could be interpreted many ways," he said. "Some of the answers were definitely helpful, one actually being correct in that the focus was supposed to be on an equal division of the pizza and not on the fraction as the problem suggested."

In the end the dad confirmed his daughter went with her original answer, as drawn on the sheet, where she divided the first pizza into thirds, and the second saw each person get a quarter of the pie plus a third of the fourth slice each.

(The dude from Good Will Hunting didn't reply in time to confirm that's the answer.)

Originally published as 'Throw it in the bin': Year 2 maths homework about pizza gets same response