3116 Wrong

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Men are like fine wine. They start out as grapes, and it's up to the women
to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something
acceptable to have dinner with.
-- Dave Barry --

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This is from Fail Blog, and my head is still reeling. Fail Blog posts are usually funny (mostly in a Juvenal Three Stooges way), but this one is more frightening than funny.

The test question is, "It took Marie 10 minutes to saw a board into 2 pieces. If she works just as fast, how long will it take her to saw another board into three pieces?"

The student answered 20 minutes. The teacher (I assume it was the teacher, if it were anyone else they would have been working from the teacher's answer key, anyway) red-penciled it wrong, explaining that if 2 pieces take 10 minutes, then 3 pieces take 15, and 4 take 20 minutes.

Sigh.

This reminds me of when my youngest sister was in high school in Florida (pre-internet days) and I was living in Gettysburg, Pa. She sent me a desperate letter asking for battlefield postcards. Her history teacher was teaching them that Gettysburg was in Virginia. Little sister told her that Gettysburg was in Pennsylvania, and that maybe she meant Fredericksburg, Virginia, where there was also a battle. The teacher got angry at her, refused to believe her, insisted that THE Gettysburg is in Virginia. "Maybe there's a Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, but that's not where the turning point was, and the "Four score..." speech. That was in Virginia."

Little sister didn't know what to do about the Civil War unit test.

Ok, sometimes teachers can be wrong. They're human, too. I just get crazy when they refuse to admit the possibility that they may be wrong.

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Later --- Within minutes of hitting "publish" for this post, I had almost a dozen search hits, people looking for Marie and her saw. Sheesh. I hope people weren't looking for the correct answer!

[For any confused souls out there, the correct answer is 20 minutes. One CUT takes 10 minutes, so two CUTS will take 20 minutes. The number of resulting pieces isn't what takes the time, it's the cutting that takes the time, and she makes two cuts at 10 minutes each to produce three pieces. Ok?]

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Oct. 6 - Wow! Somebody has apparently linked to this post in some forum, and I'm getting a bazillion hits from there. I can't see what was said in the forum, because it requires registration, so if any visitors would like to tell me in a comment (anonymous or a made-up name is fine, and Blogger doesn't give me access to the email address) why this post is so fascinating, why people are visiting, what they're saying in the forum, I'd appreciate it very much. Thank you for any info.
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