Friday, May 16, 2008

A PhD should be . . .

. . . smarter than a fifth grader. But he wasn't. Missed the first question. Walked away with the grand total of $0.00. Shouldn't a PhD in ANY discipline be able to do third grade math?

The question that was beyond the PhD's math ability:

If a pound of peanuts costs 48 cents, how much does 5/8 of a pound cost?

Now, no cheating, no pencil and paper. Do it in your head. What's the answer?
Growlings by at

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oooooh dear!

If you're going to mess up on national TV you want to it NOT to be the first question and definitely NOT a simple maths question.

I always say to people "I'm no good at maths, the computer does it for me".

"Smarter than a fifth grader"? - apparently the answer, Mr PhD, is that you are not. Oops. Please hand back your PhD as you exit the studio. :-)

p.s. You'll be glad to hear that OF COURSE I got the right answer - without cheating - although, to be fair, I was not staring down the barrel of a TV camera at the same time.

8:31 AM
Jack said...

Ian,

Another interesting vagary in the English language. Here it's math, there it's maths. The lone "s" makes it sound a tad odd to our ears.

6:02 PM
Lisa said...

I had to stop and think about it for a minute but not THAT tough.

6:53 PM

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