Frazz by Jef Mallett for October 18, 2015

The lazy student would just write 6.

Was this a worthy goal? I guess we’re prone to pass it off as, “He’s just a child; he’ll get more serious as he grows older.”Or maybe the pleasure he receives from Frazz’s approval and his own mischievous delight will set him on a less than serious life. We could use another Richard Pryor.

After all that he got it wrong: 90+18=108, so 18/108=1/6 and ?=6, not 5. So was Caulfield too clever (she didn’t notice his error) or not clever enough?

Apple problems are common core?

KentheCoffinDweller…. I agree that they’re different questions…This problem was very badly stated….Math should not be so ambiguous that people interpret the equation differently, and besides, however you read it, the equivalence is incorrect…

But with the equal sign where she has placed it…to me, it doesn’t ask what fraction of the red apples are equivalent to the number of green ones….which, as you say, would be 1/5.

It says 90 red apples “and” 18 green ones…(which does make 108 apples.)are “=” to a certain fraction of green apples, which is 1/6. (Of course, neither 90 nor 108 actually EQUALS a fraction.)

If I’m correct , her question should have been written (as in your second example) …. “If you have 90 red apples plus 18 green apples, the fraction of all the apples that are green is 1/? "

Three Steps…. good one!

I want to know how he reached the top of the board.

I took it as a simple ratio of green to red. And the answer given in the comic supports me on this. 5.

Applesauce.

If that was my classroom, Caulfield would show his work at the blackboard everyday in order to demonstrate his creativity and unique perspective to the rest of the students. I’m sure they would appreciate it.

The disagreement in the comments between 5 & 6 (which I believe to be correct) is why Caulfield needs to show his work. With the solution method supporting the answer, either 5 or 6 is correct. With Caulfield’s “solution” it is wrong.

@Whiteheron is correct because 18 tart green apples + 90 sweet red apples = delicious applesauce (though I’d increase the green ratio a little more). ;-)

is the question asking for 1:5 green to red, or 1/6 of all the apples are green?

Too often we do not get the correct answer simply because we have not asked the correct question

" Can we talk about something else now?"-————————————I wholly concur. I grow tired of Bicycle Boy’s daily superciliousness, thus just a Sunday peek once in a while, while wondering if he’ll EVER be invited back again to the Bob & Tom radio show.

Forget about how Caulfield reached the top of the board — the true question is why did Mrs. O have only one question posted? Seems a waste of board space that invited just the result we see (and by the way, the hardcopy in the LA Times is absolutely unreadable. Thanks for a clear vision gocomics.)

I love the Venn Diagram.

Uh … how long did it take him to write all that on the blackboard? How many boxes of chalk?

As usual, he spent more time avoiding the work than it would have taken him to o it.

OK, look: the use of the word “and” in the problem statement makes it clear that a sum is to be performed, so the value of ‘?’ must be 6. The percentage of red apples that are green apples is zero, so the other interpretation is unreasonable.

The Venn diagram Caulfield provided is bogus (along with the calculus) but notice that he labelled the intersection of the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ as ‘Z’, not ‘?’, indicating that he knew the intersection of the set of green apples and the set of red apples was the null set.

This might be an homage to Douglas Adams’ magnum opus wherein the number 42 appears significantly, and is explained at one point by “What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”

Or Caulfield was simply testing Mrs.Olsen to see if she knew the right answer.

As a teacher, I’d rather have a dozen curious and motivated Caulfields than a room full of LittlePumas any day.