Anyone know any tricky word problems that a high school kid could be easily fooled by? I’m not looking for difficult math, but rather problems where the wording misleads the student.
For example, this one gets a surprising number of high school kids:
If it takes 10 minutes to cut a board into 2 pieces, how long does it take to cut it into 3 pieces?
For some reason, a lot of high school kids set up a proportion and figure it takes 5 minutes per piece, so they arrive at 15 minutes as an answer.
Does anyone have any similar kind of trick problems of that nature?
A farmer has ten cows. All but seven of them die. How many cows are left?
Three horses were galloping at 27 miles per hour. What was the speed of one horse?
A dog breeder owns 3 adult male dogs, 5 adult females (2 of which are pregnant), and 13 puppies (6 of which are male). If a dog is selected at random, what is the probability that it is pregnant and male?
If a bucket of 60 degree water is added to a bucket of 60 degree water, how hot is the resulting water?
You’re driving a bus with 10 passengers. At one stop, 2 people get off and 4 people get on. At the next stop, one person gets off and 5 get on. At the next stop, half of the passengers get off and no one gets on. How old is the bus driver?
Look Around You - Maths is a great educational video that has 3 sample problems worked in. It’s only about 10 minutes long and I believe that all the problems they give are “tricky” but don’t require advanced mathematics.
Most people will instinctively say $1.00 but the correct answer is $0.50. If the wine is $9.00 more than the wine, the wine is $9.50 and the bottle $0.50. Gets 'em every time.
Yes, I know it’s a joke, but I have to say it. Horsepower is a unit of power (rate at which power is transferred or rate at which work is done (work being the application of force over a distance)), not speed.
I wouldn’t say this is a problem where the wording is misleading. It’s actually a counter-intuitive answer if you’re completely unfamiliar with statistics.