Katharina Buczek
This man’s son recently completed a homework assignment for math class, and his son’s teacher marked one of the answers incorrect.
And after he learned that, he decided to look at the assignment and help his son figure out where they went wrong. However, upon reading the question, he concluded that his son’s answer was actually right.
“Last year, a phone company had a loss of $25 million. This year, the loss is $14 million more than last year. What is this year’s loss?” the question asked.
His son added up the two losses and ended up writing down “$39 million.” And according to him, he believed that was the right answer all along. However, his son’s teacher noted that the correct answer was actually negative $39 million.
So, he decided to email his son’s teacher and ask, “Why would 25 + 14 = -39?”
And the teacher was apparently a bit annoyed by this question because she emailed back a kind of snarky response.
“If you read the problem, it says they had a loss of $25 million (loss) -25 and a loss of $14 million (loss) -14. So, (-25) + (-14) = (-39). If you have any further questions about the problem, you can email me during my work hours. Thank you, and good evening,” the teacher responded. Yikes!
And even though the teacher’s logic does make sense, he believes that the question was not worded the same way.
“I think it’s clear she is annoyed at me. But, if you look at how the question is phrased, her explanation is worded very differently from the original question,” he explained.
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