Tuesday, March 17, 2015

[#Critique] Do pediatricians suck at #maths (#math) ?

It looks like some pediatrician is complaining that maths (that's the way we spell it in Singapore) is too hard.

Paul has two-thirds as many postcards as Sean has and the number of postcards Sean has is three-fifths the number of postcards Tim has. If the boys have a total of 280 postcards, then how many more postcards does Tim have than Paul?

He says “Obviously it’s complex, but not impossible, ...  I would use a complex algebra equation to solve it and I’d guess it’s more appropriate for an eighth and ninth grade student than one still in the fifth grade.”

Oh really?  Here's an easy solution.  No complicated ("complex" can mean a few other things) algebra, nor any algebra for that matter is needed.



To answer the question "Do pediatricians suck at maths?"  My answer is: I don’t know.


But remember: Don’t use a cannon to shoot a fly, or as the Chinese say: Why kill chicken with an ox cleaver?.  Thanks for reading this blog post.  J

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