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Suppose, a litre of cola costs US$3.15. If you buy one third of a litre of cola, how much would you pay?
The above may seem like a rather basic question. Something that you would perhaps expect the vast majority of adults to be able to answer? Particularly if they are allowed to use a calculator.
Unfortunately, the reality is that a large number of adults across the world struggle with even such basic financial tasks (the correct answer is US$1.05, by the way).
[...] In many other countries, the situation is even worse. Four in every ten adults in places like England, Canada, Spain and the US can't make this straightforward calculation – even when they had a calculator to hand. Similarly, less than half of adults in places like Chile, Turkey and South Korea can get the right answer.
-- submitted from IRC
High number of adults unable to do basic mathematical tasks
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @01:14AM (7 children)
> I hate those people and want them dead.
Well, figuratively speaking, me too (I'm not planning any murders). This includes whoever wrote the "math" problem in TFA. Anyone that has been in a market and looked at bottled drink prices knows that if:
> "...a litre of cola costs US$3.15."
Then a third of a litre could be priced over a pretty wide range, but perhaps US$1.50 would be a common value.
Pricing is not a linear function of the volume of liquid purchased. This is because the cost of the cola is almost nothing, but the cost of the product has big stackups, most of which are not closely related to the volume. Packaging/shipping/handling/shelf-space are some of these other costs. Then of course there is the ever present marketing/advert budget that is required to make the cola seem desirable in the first place.
Now, if "they" would write an intelligent problem, that would be another thing. For example, I'm buying brown rice from the bulk section, where I fill my own bag, the price per pound is $3.05 ...(you get the idea).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @03:04AM (6 children)
To get any cola, you have to buy the entire 1 liter bottle.
The answer is $3.15.
brown rice from the bulk section
Yup. They need to get some people who aren't stupid and have them write the questions.
You clearly make the short list.
This stuff is why a generalized AI is difficult.
(Watson blew Final Jeopardy because it didn't realize that Toronto isn't in USA.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by IndigoFreak on Friday March 16 2018, @03:08AM (5 children)
When I read the start of this, I thought that as well. I thought the answer was going to be $3.15 and it was a trick question because you buy a liter, you don't dump out 2/3's of it then argue the price is $1.05.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Friday March 16 2018, @05:01AM (2 children)
Three people splitting the bottle is what I thought.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Friday March 16 2018, @01:06PM
Yes, but that is not the way that the question is asked. Was this an oversight on the part of the test creator? Or a deliberate introduction of ambiguity between the different questions "divide by 3" and "guess the price of a 330 ml single-serve bottle"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @01:09PM
That would have been an easy way to make a decently SENSIBLE question. Though I guess some people would say "but this guy, he always drinks so much of it, so he always pays $1.50".
(Score: 2) by danmars on Friday March 16 2018, @02:24PM (1 child)
With some effort to interpret the question in a way that would make some sense, I assumed they were wondering what the price-per-liter was for the 3-liter bottle. (Logical application: Below what price would it be a better deal to buy 3 1-liter bottles?)
This is a common type of insufficiently-specific "word question" I've seen in some math questions other places (like Facebook). It's also the kind of question you'll see a lot from second-line support at a technology company, where you need to figure out what they're trying to ask you instead of just answering the words they wrote in the question.
For those of us who like to use the shortcut of the price-per-unit on the shelf price tag, if you pay attention you'll notice that they're often wrong, and not just because of "bonus 20%" packaging. I'm sure most people never notice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @09:27PM
Another well-formulated question.
...unlike the one in TFS's example.
You also go on the short list of qualified people.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]