Many of us have a love-hate relationship with math. In school, math was fun in the beginning, but it gradually got harder and harder. And if you were really unlucky, your math teacher didn’t really help you understand how numbers are connected to your everyday life. Math skills are essential to financial planning and for different careers, even for the ones that may not seem math related. It can also prevent you from getting conned in sticky situations. Another reason to study math is personal satisfaction. You have to admit that there is no feeling like getting a math problem correct. It’s the best. Below you’ll find a flower math problem believed to be given to kindergarten students in China, and everyone is getting it wrong. But we have faith in you. Work through the problem slowly, pay attention to detail, and show us your inner math genius.
The logic in arriving at this answer is: Step 1: __ + __ + __ = 60 Each red flower is worth 20. Step 2: 20 + __ + __ = 30 So, each blue flower is worth 5. Step 3: 5 – __ = 3. There are 2 yellow flowers, so each of them are worth 1. Step 4: 1 + (20 x 5) = 101. If you follow PEMDAS, you’ll end up with 101.
*The Facebook user meant petals, not leaves.
The number of petals DOES matter. In Steps 2 and 3, the blue flower with 5 petals was worth 5, but in Step 4, it’s worth 4. If you revisit the problem, you’ll end up with the correct answer: 81.
Whether you got it on the first, second, third, or hundredth try, give yourself a pat on the back for doing math. You’re awesome.
