The problems says “What fraction of water bottles will she put into each cup?”. You’re suggesting that we should ignore the word “bottles” and assume it’s asking about the volume of transferred water?
Another vote for “It’s a horrible, nonsensical question.”
The correct answer is missing from the list.
The correct answer is “zero.”
John's Mom is ordered to fill three cups with WATER.
And then we are asked what fraction of BOTTLES she must put into each cup.
She has not been ordered to fill the cups with BOTTLES, therefore the correct answer is ZERO.
No. Just no.
The question as written only has one reasonable answer (D, 1 1/3), but it’s a very bad question. Among the many other issues with the grammar, how often do you see any water bottle that’s smaller than any cup?
Would a 3rd grader be asking about “4 bottles and 3 cups”? Eeewww gross…
Is this the same Texas that approved Fearon’s Biology for use in schools? And hey, Texas also gets a mention here in my favourite article about academic writing: 6 Disturbing Things I Learned Writing Your Textbooks
Anyway, my wife’s oldest kid was taught that 5/0 = 1, so I wouldn’t expect all the school teachers to pick up on problems in the worksheets…
Having said that, I’ve written problem sheets and course outlines and exams. Doing it right is hard work. If the money’s not there, there isn’t time to do it right.
4/3 bottle/cup. Simple.
The answer must be exrpessed as “She will put X into each cup”. The answer cannot possibly be greater than 1/3, because “each cup” cannot possibly contain more than 1/3 of any or all of the water described in the problem. After she fills each cup, with 1/3 each, she will stop pouring. It won’t matter if any water remains in the bottles afterwards, that is irrelevant.
If you want to interpret the problem as calculating how much of the water in the bottles she has to pour, we have absolutely no data. That is an unknown. But if the total contents of the bottles is >3 cups, then the answer will have to be <1/3 in each cup, and no such solution is offered as a choice. How can “each cup” contain 3/4, 1-3/4, or 1-1/3 of it all?
You’re being misled by what we all agree is the absolutely terrible wording of the question. As I said upthread, the question could have been very simply posed in terms of quantity rather than “bottles” – 4 liters, pints, or whatever, instead of 4 bottles. If it’s posed as a simple problem of dividing it three ways, it’s a straightforward question that is easy to understand, and the answer is that each cup will contain 1 1/3 bottles, liters, pints, or whatever you want the units to be, so that the three cups together contain 4 of the units. You’re overthinking a very simple problem.
Of course, the question is so horribly worded that maybe we all have it wrong!
But I think most of us are generally in agreement that the question has been answered and this is now going off the rails in all directions. So let me suggest (somewhat less seriously) that we further the teaching of arithmetic by adding the element of subtraction as well as fractions, and then throw in some local color for realism, and give the third-graders a practical question like the following:
John’s mom has four liters of whiskey. Her friend the night worker and her pimp are coming over to help her drink it, but the night worker can’t have more than half a liter or she’ll be too drunk to work the streets and then the pimp will punch her face in. If John’s mom gives the night worker her maximum tolerance of half a liter, and John’s mom and the pimp divide the remaining whiskey equally, how much will they each be able to imbibe that night?
I believe that third-grade situational math questions should have unambiguously clear language. 
How is it poorly worded? It’s no harder than what fraction do you get if divide 6 bananas by 2 plates.
It says she has 4 bottles, and needs to fill 3 cups. That strongly implies that each cup is filled to the brim (or some “full” mark). And nowhere does it say it takes exactly 4 bottles to fill 3 cups. Also, in real life, a typical bottle holds much more liquid than a typical cup. So we are left with a mental image of 3 full cups, and some water left in the bottles.
Exactly, there is a lack of initial conditions as to the capacity of both elements.
I needed to go grab something to drink and I looked on the shelf at the convenience store and thought of this thread.
In the refrigerator there were all of these sizes of “water bottles” or in this case “bottled water”
8 oz, 12 oz, 16.9 oz, 33.8 oz
Worse a Cup is a physical object but also a unit of measure. The physical object does not have standard sizes, or worse are modeled to mimic the look of what should be a standard size.
The of the most common “regular” standard paper cup size is 8oz/240ml
So if you had a 33.8 oz/1 L water bottle it would fill all 3, but if you had an 8 oz water bottle you would have 1/4 of the water still in the water bottles.
The reason that it is not the same as “divide 6 bananas by 2 plates” is that you are dividing known quantities and placing them despite the “capacity” of the plate.
How many jiggers in an imperial fifth?
Yes, just yes. That is the answer to the question asked, due to the poor grasp of English.
Before or after Jack and Jill went up the hill?
Sounds like a lot of complicating assumptions for a 3rd grade math problem. Why not go with the simplest interpretation in the context of 3rd grade math and treat it as a simple ratio?
Because an intelligent child will be as confused as most previous respondents here: we understand where the potential confusion comes from, but they might be wrongly penalised.
Lord, is this problem terribly written.
The first thing I noticed was the absence of the word ‘equal’ anywhere.
Are the water bottles all the same size? How about the cups? We aren’t told.
Are we supposed to divide the water equally among the cups? We aren’t told that key detail either. Actually, we sort of are, but that depends on the size of the cups, since we’re told that John’s mom needs to fill the cups. Not equally divide the available water among the cups, but fill the cups.
So we need to know: is there enough water in the bottles to fill the cups? Is there going to be water left over? If so, how many bottles of water (whole or fractional, and if so, what fraction) will be left over? If there isn’t going to be enough water to fill the cups, do we fill as many cups as we can, with one cup being partly filled? Or do we partially fill them all equally?
There is no right answer to this problem.
D is the right answer to the problem we were expecting to see, which is probably the problem the writer was intending to write. But let’s just say the writer didn’t realize his/her intent.
If there are four pecks in a bushel, and 12 bushels in a shitload, how many…
Yes, definitely. I think we need OP to identify the school and/or textbook and transfer thread to the Pit with an appropriate new title.
… Still, not as bad as Richard Feynman’s famous example
[QUOTE=Richard Feynman, after appointment to a Committee to evaluate California’s textbooks]
Finally I come to a book that says, “Mathematics is used in science in many ways. We will give you an example from astronomy, which is the science of stars.” I turn the page, and it says, “Red stars have a temperature of four thousand degrees, yellow stars have a temperature of five thousand degrees . . .” – so far, so good. It continues: “Green stars have a temperature of seven thousand degrees, blue stars have a temperature of ten thousand degrees, and violet stars have a temperature of . . . (some big number).” There are no green or violet stars, but the figures for the others are roughly correct. It’s vaguely right – but already, trouble! That’s the way everything was: Everything was written by somebody who didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, so it was a little bit wrong, always! And how we are going to teach well by using books written by people who don’t quite understand what they’re talking about, I cannot understand. I don’t know why, but the books are lousy; UNIVERSALLY LOUSY!
Anyway, I’m happy with this book, because it’s the first example of applying arithmetic to science. I’m a bit unhappy when I read about the stars’ temperatures, but I’m not very unhappy because it’s more or less right – it’s just an example of error. Then comes the list of problems. It says, “John and his father go out to look at the stars. John sees two blue stars and a red star. His father sees a green star, a violet star, and two yellow stars. What is the total temperature of the stars seen by John and his father?” – and I would explode in horror.
[/QUOTE]