# How many minutes in a quarter hour? What's 3x3x3? College students try (and fail) to answer the important questions of our time! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 24, 2025, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358 "2025-09-24T14:41:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/1 "2025-09-24T14:41:56Z")
I have no comment beyond the observation that these people vote! And will probably eventually procreate, creating miniature versions of themselves. Enjoy, but try not to despair! 😁 [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/W4qXYign0gw/maxresdefault.jpg "Dumbest Students of 2024 Can't Answer Basic Questions!") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4qXYign0gw) ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/2 "2025-09-24T15:04:31Z")
I only watched the first 8 minutes, but maybe all the people saying that a quarter of an hour is 25 minutes long are living on French post-revolutionary time? ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/3 "2025-09-24T15:34:14Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Enjoy, but try not to despair! 😁 Almost 43 minutes of students giving incredibly dumb answers to basic knowledge questions? No thank you, will not enjoy. I will despair, though. > [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > maybe all the people saying that a quarter of an hour is 25 minutes long are living on French post-revolutionary time? That’s Metric, isn’t it? Metric hours are 100 minutes long, right? I don’t know… being an American I pride myself on my ignorance of the Metric system. /s ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/4 "2025-09-24T15:41:08Z")
> [@solost](#): > > That’s Metric, isn’t it? Metric hours are 100 minutes long, right? I don’t know… being an American I pride myself on my ignorance of the Metric system. /s Louie: Jim! Where you been?! Jim: I don’t work weekends. Louie: You been gone nine days! Tony: Jim, weekends are only two days. Jim: I thought we switched to the metric system! ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/5 "2025-09-24T15:43:06Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Almost 43 minutes of students giving incredibly dumb answers to basic knowledge questions? No thank you, will not enjoy. I will despair, though. It wouldn’t be funny if it was scripted. But it’s real, so I find it a combination of amazing + funny I liked Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” bits, too, but this is even more amazing because these are kids who must have met some minimal college entrance qualifications and are in the process of being college educated. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/6 "2025-09-24T16:03:52Z")
Being a YT video, I wouldn’t be _too_ sure it’s not scripted, and just presented as ‘real’. On the other hand, no one went broke underestimating the ignorance of the general public. ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ has an occasional ‘Person on the Street’ style segment where they ask random people a seemingly obvious question and get a series of wrong answers. I like to think they’re cherry-picking a small subset of wrong answers out of a large amount of people. But the Kimmel segment is only a few minutes long. In an almost 43 minute long video, assuming it _is_ real and not scripted, that would be a _lot_ of cherry-picking. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/7 "2025-09-24T16:50:01Z")
[Turns out **soloist** ninja’ed the point I wanted to make] ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/8 "2025-09-24T18:22:26Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Being a YT video, I wouldn’t be _too_ sure it’s not scripted, and just presented as ‘real’. > > On the other hand, no one went broke underestimating the ignorance of the general public. My intuition strongly suggests that these are totally real, though certainly edited to only include the spectacularly stupid ones. It’s a lot easier for a random YouTuber to find really stupid people than to find really good actors. And these guys are either morons, or putting on Oscar-worthy performances of them. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/9 "2025-09-24T19:02:54Z")
I’ve seen and enjoyed this sort of video in the past. Amazing how ignorant some people are (and how apparently unconcerned they are about it.) ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/10 "2025-09-24T21:04:36Z")
There are a number of (U.S.-based) videos of a person asking random folks on the street _very_ basic questions on U.S. history. Like, “What country did we gain our independence from?” and “In what century was our Civil War fought?” You would be amazed at the answers some people provide. ---
**Author:** ![Timz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Timz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timz)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/11 "2025-09-24T21:21:57Z")
Next question: how much improvement if you tell them you’ll give them $50 for each correct answer? “Name three countries outside the US.” Would she come up with them? “What’s three times three times three?” If she gave it a little thought … By the way: did each of them have to give his approval to be included in the video? ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/12 "2025-09-24T21:30:16Z")
> [@Timz](#): > > Next question: how much improvement if you tell them you’ll give them $50 for each correct answer? Money doesn’t work this way in case of ignorance. You could offer me ten trillion dollars, and I still couldn’t come up with a proof for the Riemann hypothesis. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/13 "2025-09-24T21:31:07Z")
I dunno… how many hours in a work-year? How many watt-hours in a lightyear? Not their fault we teach computers in base-2 and science in base-10 and timekeeping in base-60 and everything else in base-insanity… 😅 ---
**Author:** ![Timz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Timz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timz)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/14 "2025-09-24T21:44:32Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > Money doesn’t work this way in case of ignorance. Offer her $100 for each country she can name, outside the US. Think she would still get zero? She’s never heard of Canada, or Mexico? ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/15 "2025-09-24T21:51:18Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > Money doesn’t work this way in case of ignorance. You could offer me ten trillion dollars, and I still couldn’t come up with a proof for the Riemann hypothesis. Well, maybe not for a complex proof, but it seems you can sometimes bribe people into “thinking harder” and doing better: [Immediate rewards for good scores can boost student performance | University of Chicago News](https://news.uchicago.edu/story/immediate-rewards-good-scores-can-boost-student-performance) > Among high school students, the amount of money involved in the incentive mattered. Students performed better if offered $20 rather than $10. “At Bloom Township High School, when we offered students $20 incentives, we found that their scores were 0.12 to .20 standard deviation points (five to sixth months in improved performance) above what we would otherwise have predicted given their previous test scores,” Sadoff said. That effect may have even made it into LLM training, such that bribing a chatbot with the offer of a financial reward will make them return longer (though not necessarily “better” responses): [Does Offering ChatGPT a Tip Cause it to Generate Better Text? An Analysis | Max Woolf's Blog](https://minimaxir.com/2024/02/chatgpt-tips-analysis/) ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2025, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/16 "2025-09-25T10:59:50Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > That effect may have even made it into LLM training, such that bribing a chatbot with the offer of a financial reward will make them return longer (though not necessarily “better” responses): [Does Offering ChatGPT a Tip Cause it to Generate Better Text? An Analysis | Max Woolf’s Blog](https://minimaxir.com/2024/02/chatgpt-tips-analysis/) Kind of an aside, but I don’t see how an LLM can be influenced by an incentive. In any case, that analysis is now obsolete. ChatGPT 5 will, on its own, think harder and take longer when it deems it necessary. Necessity is determined either by some question being unusually obscure or often by its response being challenged. It’s possible that some of the doofuses in the video might give better answers if appropriately incentivized, but I suspect the effect might not be very large. The commonality of particular wrong answers like a quarter-hour has 25 minutes, or 3^3 is equal to 9, suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of the problem. One respondent suggested that 3^3 was either 0 or 1, and she was going to guess “1” – this kind of thought process is not likely to be helped by any incentive. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2025, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/17 "2025-09-25T12:25:40Z")
> [@Timz](#): > > Offer her $100 for each country she can name, outside the US. The woman who was asked that question in the first couple minutes of the OP video gave ‘Africa’ as one of her answers. She would have gotten a tidy $5400 just for that! 😏 > **[How many countries in Africa? - Worldometer](https://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many-countries-in-africa/)** ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2025, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/18 "2025-09-25T13:12:19Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Kind of an aside, but I don’t see how an LLM can be influenced by an incentive. “I am now telling the computer **exactly** what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate.” ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2025, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/19 "2025-09-25T13:43:06Z")
Probably the majority of 4th and 5th graders I’ve known would have been amused by what doofuses these college students are. ---
**Author:** ![We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/We_re_wolves_not_werewolves)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2025, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358/20 "2025-09-25T13:56:18Z")
I’m not excusing these people entirely, because most of these questions are so basic a child should be able to answer correctly, but could part of the issue be these kids are put on the spot, in front of a camera, feeling a little pressure, and just blurt out the first thing that comes to their minds? I mean, I have to believe that if given these questions on a written test, with time to think, they could come up with the right answers (at least I so so desperately _want_ to believe this) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-minutes-in-a-quarter-hour-whats-3x3x3-college-students-try-and-fail-to-answer-the-important-questions-of-our-time/1023358.md?page=2)