Brain Stretch

[Guest]

Brian has some boxes of paper clips. Some boxes hold 10 clips, some hold 100. He has some paper clips left over. He has 3 more boxes with 100 paper clips than he has with 10 paper clips. He has 2 fewer paper clips left over than he has numbers of boxes of 100 paper clips. What number of paper clips could he have?

[Guest]

let n = number of boxes with 10 clips
number of boxes with 100 clips = n+3
number left over = (n+3)-2
Total number = 10n+100(n+3)+((n+3)-2) = 111n+301

This is apparently a question from the U.S. common core math curriculum for children, and is not intended to be done by algebra, but by messing around with numbers.

http://forum.codecall.net/topic/77960-h ... core-math/

Although I agree with the sentiment that it is probably beneficial to teach a greater understanding of why the rules/algorithms we use in maths work, the execution of this appears to have been extremely poor (with most criticism being rightly aimed at the people who came up with the curriculum in the first place).

Hope this helped,

R. Baber.

[Guest]

Thank you