Is This a Bad Kids Maths Question?

This is a screenshot of a kids math question, I think it’s a terrible question as it doesn’t provide enough detail to definitely answer the question. My wife thinks it’s obvious as you can eye it. The answer agrees with her. I think it’s stupid.

What do you guys think is the answer and if it’s a good question.

https://files.ozbargain.com.au/upload/34092/118593/img_0860.…

Poll Options expired

  • 5
    Red
  • 1293
    Blue
  • 46
    Yellow
  • 23
    Equally likely

Comments

            • +1

              @Shame:

              Gravity would dictate that where it is now is where it would stop.

              What if it was in deep space? Or in free fall in a vacuum? Or in an air tunnel? Or flat on earth but the spinner is magnetic?

              • @fantombloo: Then gravity would not apply?

                But you are right. We ideally need to know the initial starting point for the spin, is it spun from this same spot every spin? The force at which it is spun at. The coefficient of wind drag and bearing friction. Is the arrow balanced or is is weighted more to the inside or the outside? Is the pointer fixed and is it the circle that spins?

                Maybe OP is right.. I had not considered all the other variables.

                I've changed my mind… Red is more likely.

            • +1

              @Shame: I can see why you are wearing the cone of shame.

        • +3

          Board of education review team: ok we did not expect this to get so messy

        • You're under-thinking this - clearly the only solution is to throw them into a black hole where they'll be squished to the size of a few atoms into a state of quantum wave probabilities, constructively & deconstructively coalescing into the median skin colour of Smurf + Simpson offspring: fundamentals for a 12-year old these days

  • +2

    This is a clear question.

    Print out the picture, cut it up and have the child put the pieces next to each other.

    I don't feel the vibes that it can be anything other than Blue. Red can only be an answer if the diagram is not drawn to scale or some trickery is involved with the interpretation of the question.

  • +1

    Depends on how good Matt is at spinning

  • +4

    It's quite obviously Blue, because the Blue areas combined are bigger than the one Yellow area or three Red areas.

    If you want, you could even try this yourself - take the shape, cut it out, and make a spinner. Do 100 spins, record each result, and see what the outcome is. Might be a nice afternoon activity with the kid, and a chance to teach them about forming hypotheses and experimentation.

    • +1

      Find me a kid, with a phone and with an attention span that reaches 100 spins of something not on a phone.

  • +3

    Is it bad math? No

    Is it a bad question? No

    Is it poorly represented? Possibly without context.

    To explain:

    It clearly meets CLT (cognitive load theory) requirements in that each element is labelled on the element. However, the stretch is in the separation of colours. Not ideal.

    Therefore, you have to question is it about math (as in pure numbers) or is it about something else? As someone else pointed out, this is more to do with spatial reasoning - being able to eye a volume or mass and judge what it is and whether it is greater than or less than something else.

    Without knowing, Im calling NAPLAN practice Year 3.

    • Year 3.

      Why disrespect OP like this?

      (I can appreciate the serious answer though).

  • I asked my kid. He answered "grey".

    it doesn’t provide enough detail

    You need to make whatever assumptions are necessary to give an answer, in school tests, e.g. pointer stops at a random angle.
    Though at ATAR exam level, they should be more explicit.

    This is what you'd see on an IQ test, rather than a maths test. NAPLAN 3 sounds right.

    • -1

      I agree with your assumption, that it was likely a grade 3 student who authored this question.
      An adult author would consider the absurd notion of a printed spinning needle that cannot move and instead, opt for a traditional geometry pie chart where the student needs only to figure out which segments have the largest total area.

  • +2

    OP IT'S OBVIOUSLY BLUE. THERE ARE TWO OF THEM. IT TAKES UP HALF THE CIRCLE

    • -1

      Not if the wheel is vertical and stationary.Stop yelling, or you'll draw attention to your false conclusion.

      • +6

        Literally half the circle is blue. There are two remaining colours, red and yellow, which means in sum they must both be less than half.

        But what if it's spinning? What if it's not flat? What if it's a windy day? What if Matt's colourblind? People who aren't good at thinking will come up with all sorts of explanations and excuses for why their bad maths is correct. It was exactly the same at school. Some idiot up the back would yell out "but what if the elephant can fly??" as if it was some genius contribution.

        Here they're trying to work out if the kid can understand probability, not whether the kid can come up with some BS edge case.

        • -8

          We were asked our opinion mate.You got it. It's a crap maths problem (unless! the class actually had one of these 'spinners' and used it, so was familiar with it etc)

          The question literally asked about where a 'spinning needle' would land, not which colours form the major part of the circle.
          This looks like a fkn AI design test to me.

          Class clowns are a whole different kettle of fish.

      • +1

        The thing is that the question doesn't talk about being vertical, the density of the material, or the use of lubricant in the wheel, or being under the water, or on the moon's surface, or whatever other information that would make this a complex question. Therefore, you answer the question with the information that you have, and the right obvious answer is blue.

        It's like "what's 2+2?"
        Well, are we talking about 2 cats + 2 dogs, or 2 oranges + 2 cars? It's 2+2 ffs, there is no catch.

  • +6

    The question is valid. To me it's about estimating.

  • +8

    This question is proudly brought to you by Star Casino.

    • +2

      Can I just bet they’ll all have a good time?

    • A great skill to have in this country.

  • +8

    subjective for a maths question.

    It's not subjective at all.

  • -8

    What a shit question. It may be framed as maths, but it's a good introduction to (bad) English.

  • +4

    It's not going to land on anything. It's printed on the paper, no option to spin it.

  • I don't like these types of questions more because I question if you are really catching out people who do not understand probability or if conflated with those is a not insignificant number that just weren't paying attention or have other perception issues. I can bet you that is the kind of question I could hand to my kids and on any particular day they could grab it, look to come up with an answer in 5 seconds and move on, and in doing so might get it wrong but it is more of an impatience/not noticing thing rather than a lack of understanding if they gave themselves slightly longer to answer it.

    I think we all got the 'joke' test in school where the first instruction was to read every question before commencing our answers when the last question basically said not to answer any of the questions at all when it was at least half of the smart alec kids (myself included) that raced along diligently working out every question in order before we finally got the last question and realised we'd been stupid.

    Obviously we weren't stupid though, just careless in our perception and eagerness to move and I think the same kind of kid could get tripped up here (being in grayscale doesn't help either.. colour it would probably be less easy to miss what is going on).

    • +4

      If you think of it more as testing analytical mathematical capability it makes sense.

      Mathematics isn't about just spitting out memorised facts. You should be able to think logically and pay attention… So it's actually a very good question at getting at that.

    • +4

      Yes I too could get things right if I didn't get them wrong.

    • +3

      That’s a lot of words to say you got stuff wrong.

      Reading the question, applying knowledge, thinking logically, and providing the correct answer are all part of the process.

    • I think we all got the 'joke' test in school where the first instruction was to read every question before commencing our answers when the last question basically said not to answer any of the questions at all when it was at least half of the smart alec kids (myself included) that raced along diligently working out every question in order before we finally got the last question and realised we'd been stupid.

      I never got this "joke" test, either in my 12 years of schooling (plus university), or in my time as a teacher.

      • I neither got this "test" as well. It sounds like a very cruel prank to play on kids, especially when it's done by someone in authority such as a teacher.

  • +4

    Let's hope your kid will take after their mother, eventually.

  • +1

    I feel like there is two questions here one is estimation but the other is spatial.
    I think if you and your kid cut the paper up and put the colours together. You will see one is bigger then the other (blue). So from a maths perspective you both probably would be able to understand that there is a higher likelihood for it to land on the biggest value and i bet you both would be right there.

    The issue is spatially you and your kid aren't estimating how much bigger blue is. You are seeing 3 reds and are seeing it similar to the 2 blues and you are seeing the 2 blues and seeing it similar to the 1 yellow.

    I actually can kind of understand that to be honest. If I were to ask people to compare yellow to red I bet people would have a much harder time. But see if you think about it "spatially" imagine the colours of the triangles on top of the other and see if you come to the same conclusion. If you stick the 1 blue triangle on top of the yellow for example, does it take up more then half of it, in your head?

  • The question is designed to judge a kids visual representation of sections and sub sections and see if they can add the colours and visualise if blue or red will be large or smaller than each other? including yellow?

    I mean, it could be the same question and it could have the % next to the colours and this will test the kids addition and conclude X colour will most likely land on X colour based on their maths.

    Imo nothing wrong with the question. I just think it's testing ones visual queues. Tbh I said yellow first cause I didn't read the colours.

    But because it's a maths question, I would have put in the percentages of each section.

  • +1

    Pie charts are worst visuals, crap question.

    • +2

      It is true that pie charts show heavy bias of estimated areas for segments in different locations (eg horizontal vs vertical) and that people using perform poorly when asked to estimate the % from the chart…. However in this case blue is OBVIOUSLY the largest. It’s not even close.

  • +1

    If you take away the labelling they all look grey to me. Funny that the margin is blue though.

  • +1

    The spinner is most likely to land on the grey shades, especially the ones with blue written on them.

  • +2

    Why is it hard? Just blue really. It's almost half the entire circle.

  • +1

    Wonder if this one will hit news.com.au.

    Year Two One student’s math question leaves the internet stumped

  • -6

    Yellow, I just printed and measured with a protractor

    • I just realised there were 2 blues, disregard me completely. ADHD

  • Its not a bad question, especially if the kids are learning to use a protractor.

  • +4

    But I think this why it is bad question

    Bruh. GTFO. That’s a bad take. If you weren’t cloudy in the head, the question is clear.

  • +1

    Confirmed; these are the kind of questions we give to the bad kids.

  • I can't believe this topic has attracted so many comments. mine included. doh.

  • +1

    Probability is covered in the early years curriculum. This is maybe year 4 maths

  • -5

    The first answer would be yellow, since that's a trick to fool quick answerers.
    Examining the areas of the pie chart, you can see the combined area marked as blue has more than the yellow or red segments.
    However, the pedantic answer is 'none of them' — Since there are no coloured areas shown, the whole of the pie chart is grey with black borders (I thought this might be a printing issue, but the sheet margin and the answer radio buttons are blue, so it seems to be a failure of design by the test author. The spinner, were it real, would not be able to land on any coloured area, only grey. Ergo, there is NO correct answer, It IS a bad maths question.

    • +3

      Bro, it's not that deep

  • It would be a maths question if it was on paper handed to the student and the student was meant to use a protractor to figure it out accurately.

    • +1

      No. Still a good maths question as it is. If they asked “By how much?” Then a protractor would be needed.

      • -1

        I disagree, at least when i was doing maths, maths always involved a mathematical equation or calculation to figure out the answer. Not just by using eyesight to see what is bigger except for perhaps in early maths where you use eyesight to differentiate between a triangle and a square.

  • +1

    OP your post makes me wish people would hurry up and divest their self esteem from math problems. Like it's okay to get them wrong dude because then you learn something and that's a good thing. If your kid got it wrong then they probably don't really care and if they do, they get to learn something too. If you got it wrong and are having some feelings about that - let them go. No one is keeping score of your math ability. It's not a measure of your intelligence.

    • +5

      Maths is for sure a measure of intelligence, just not exclusively.

  • Too easy. Hope this question is around year 3.

  • How do we know the wheel is not rigged to stop at a certain colour?

  • +1

    Umm… blue is clearly the predominate colour, I don't understand the confusion?
    It's not a maths questions though- there's no maths involved at all really… just spatial reasoning.

    Blue wedges clearly have a greater area visually than the other colours, as almost half the circle is blue.

    But if this was a kid's math's test, the writer needs a complaint. NOT MATHS.

    • +2

      I think this is Maths.

    • Seriously? You said it yourself, blue is the predominate colour. But the question is which colour the arrow is likely to land on. There is a maths theory behind the logic/reasoning that you use to arrive at the conclusion that "the arrow is likely to land on the predominate colour". Just because you don't understand the maths, doesn't mean that it is not maths.

      • GRADE 1 "Maths" question. OP has stated this was a question given to his child.

        Explain to me again how a grade 1 student is to apply your "maths logic and reasoning" to this question?

        It's a simple shape extrapolation. A grade 1 student wouldn't and couldn't analyse this any other way. They are supposed to recognise which colour is more prevalent in the pie… nothing more.

        There is no grade 1 maths that can be applied to his, and you're kidding yourself if you think there is.

  • -3

    According to AI:

    Based on the image of the spinner, here's the analysis:

    Red appears three times.
    Blue appears twice.
    Yellow appears once.

    Since the spinner has an unequal distribution of colors, the likelihood of landing on each color is not the same.

    Red has the highest probability of being landed on because it occupies the most sections on the spinner.

    Therefore, the answer to which color the spinner is most likely to land on is red.

    • +4

      I am guessing it cannot detect that the slices are a different size

      • -3

        It clearly can detect them, it's just you're not understanding the reasoning of the AI.

        Blue only has the highest chance to land on if the spinner hits the bottom half of the circle where there's only a 50% chance of that happening.

        I've gambled enough on Rust to know it's always gonna land on the 20 you dont bet on

        • What in the dickens am I reading.

    • +2

      Your AI is wrong. I ran it through the new o3 reasoning model and it said the answer is Blue because the blue portion of the circles have the largest circumference.

      Now I need to do some work to cover the $5000 I just spent

  • +9

    I feel for your wife. Can't imagine what else you've argued with her about.

  • +8

    The bigger crime here is the number of people calling it a "math" question.

    Australian forum, Australian spelling/pronunciation. It's "maths".

    I'll see my self out, I see a cloud that needs yelling at.

  • the board lies flat op not hung like a dart board… does that help?

  • +2

    Its not a terrible question. Its a question about probababilites.

  • You're probably meant to use a protractor to measure the angles, so it's not that silly a question. You don't attend all the classes (presumably) so you don't really know what the kid is being taught.

  • +1

    This is a pretty typical NAPLAN style question. It is asking about likelihood of landing on a colour on a future spin and it is a reasonable question as there is enough information to show that blue has the majority of the space available on the spinner compared to the other colours. Blue is the answer.

  • The distilled AI answer: it helps students understand that probability isn't just about size—it also involves considering all contributing factors. The question may seem simple, it's really about developing a deeper understanding of how probabilities work with multiple factors, helping kids avoid assumptions that might not always be true. It's a fundamental concept in probability that helps students learn to analyze and solve problems with more complex scenarios in the future.

  • +1

    Good question. Blue.

  • +2

    I'm a teacher, this is a fine question. It is probably above a "C" level question, because it requires a teeny tiny amount of higher order thinking/applying concepts in an unfamiliar way. In saying that, if any sound-level student above grade 2/3 got it wrong, I would be concerned about my teaching of probability.

  • +4

    It's a good question. Perfectly clear. And perfectly logical.

    The answer is obviously blue. One only needs to look at the amount of the circle taken up by blue to realise this.

    It doesn't need measuring, it doesn't need huge thought. It tests logic and spatial reasoning and probability.

    If you do not agree the answer is blue then you should conduct an experiment and review your thought processes critically, to find where you went wrong.

  • -2

    rainbow because we are all equal

  • +3

    It’s honestly quite a simple probability question. Holding all other things constant, blue has the largest area and thus it is most likely to land on blue. Not sure what else there is to it.

  • +2

    Imagine being so bad at maths that you not only get it wrong but post on ozbargain seeking validation that you can’t do early primary school maths.

    Your poor wife. Lfmao

    • In defence to OP, it's likely only a specific area of math that is misaligned with the rest of us :p

  • I agree the answer is blue. If the spinner is random, the blue areas have the greatest area, so the chance that the spinner lands on them is the highest (if they are taken as "one" colour).

    From the look of it, it's definitely a primary school year 3 or 5 NAPLAN sort of question. But i really wonder how many primary school kids would get this right. "Most likely to land on" requires an understanding of probability, and then you would need to reason and rank the colours based on this understanding. It's actually rather abstract, because you can't just look at what's in front of you; you need to simulate the event a bit in your head, and then move from counting to looking at areas. I am surprised by everyone here declaring this easy and trivial. I mean, for most adults, I guess it is. But I suspect primary school kids would struggle with it.

    I would wager that red is a popular answer, because there's 3 of them. I would also guess "all equal" to be popular, based on the tendency of many students to pick the odd answer out. I think that for this question, the only students picking blue are the ones who really understand what is going on.

  • yellow looks like its taking up the most surface area of the pie graph

    but if you need to measure, then measure it with a protractor and will give you your answer

    • No it doesn't. Blue is much larger/

  • +1

    I fail to see any possible answer but blue.

    This is why as a society we have generally terrible maths skills- maths is logic and absolute. No matter how hard you argue 1+1 Will always equal 2. Never three.

  • -1

    Chat GPT
    The spinner has the following color distribution:

    •   Red: Appears 3 times
    •   Blue: Appears 2 times
    •   Yellow: Appears 1 time
    

    The spinner is most likely to land on red, as it has the highest number of sections compared to the other colors.

    • wrong. This would be true if the sections being counted were equal size, but they are not.

    • That's what Chat told me when I just dragged the image to it, without giving it any prompts. However when I reply: "what about the size of each shape?" Chat says:

      You’re absolutely right to consider the size of each section, not just the number of segments. From the image:
      • Yellow: 1 large segment
      • Red: 3 smaller segments
      • Blue: 2 medium segments

      It’s clear that the yellow segment is significantly larger than the other segments. Even though red has more sections, the yellow section takes up more space overall.

      Conclusion:

      The spinner is most likely to land on yellow because its section occupies the largest area on the spinner.

      • "What about the total surface area of the three colours on the wheel?":

        To determine the total surface area occupied by each color on the spinner, we need to consider both the number of segments and the relative size of each segment for each color.

        From the image:
        1. Yellow: 1 large segment
        2. Red: 3 smaller segments
        3. Blue: 2 medium segments

        Observations:

        •   Yellow occupies about one-third of the wheel.
        •   Red segments combined appear to occupy roughly one-third of the wheel.
        •   Blue segments combined appear to occupy roughly one-third of the wheel.
        

        It seems that all three colors occupy approximately equal total surface areas despite being distributed differently across the wheel.

        Conclusion:

        •   The total surface area of yellow, red, and blue is roughly equal.
        •   Therefore, all three colors are equally likely when considering their total surface area.
        

        The correct answer would be: All colors are equally likely.

        • +4

          Doesn’t that just prove ChatGPT is useless

          • @lunchbox99: Nah. It can still read the label names, count the sections, and roughly see the size of them. I bet if I told it to actually measure the total area of each colour properly it would get it. It's done more weird things, have a look https://imgur.com/a/A8JZoAK

            The daft AI is looking for actual colours. I'll try again https://imgur.com/a/RbqH0A5

            So it's still looking for colour differences. https://imgur.com/a/b0veJ82

            So it's gotten over looking at colours, but it doesn't look like it's combining the named sections https://imgur.com/a/CSMcRPX

            And I give up https://imgur.com/a/B9bk3vi

            If there's a way to word the prompt to get it to do what is required, I can't think what it is right now.

          • @lunchbox99: Especially because it doesn't say "I don't know", it just confidently tells you what it thinks the answer is, regardless of whether it's right or wrong.

            If it's doing this for simple maths problems we can check ourselves, why would we feed difficult problems we can't check into it?

            • @Crow K: Exactly.

              I recently used it to template some python code and it confidently spat out some decent code using a library that doesn't exist. It only confessed this once I asked it specifically if that library exists when I couldn't find it anywhere.

              It is very good at many things, but this fundamental flaw is catastrophic in my view. If results are unreliable and require expert knowledge to detect, then I question if you can trust anything it tells you outside your specific field of expertise.

    • Further proof that my hatred for AI is well founded.

  • +1
  • OP please supply a colour screenshot, then I can answer your poll

  • +1

    I'm curious what additional information you think it would need to be able to definitively answer the question.
    Besides eyeballing it to get the answer blue,
    You could use a protractor to get the angles of each of the wedges, and total them up to again answer blue.
    It may not be your idea of a good maths question, but it's certainly easy enough to answer either by eyeballing, or using mathematical calculations if you must.

  • +4
  • +1

    The only answer is blue.
    How could it be anything else?

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