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: 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".