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A maths assignment set for a 10-year-old has left adults scratching their heads.
A parent, from the UK, took to Reddit where they shared an image of their child’s long division.
Writing in the ‘Homework Help’ thread, the unnamed user explained that the task was ‘long division’ for a ‘child’ and it had been set for ‘year 6/grade 5′ students.
The person uploaded a plain white A4 sheet filled with the long division equation: ‘861 divided by 4’, along with a number of black handwritten markings placed below it.
Though the piece of paper clearly showed the parent’s attempt at an answer, they appeared to have no confidence in the result, asking: ‘Where did I go wrong?’
‘Hello. The answer is meant to be 215.25’ wrote the parent on Reddit. ‘But I got to 215.1.
‘Where did I go wrong? This is using the Do Monkeys Smell Bad method (divide multiply subtract bring down)’.
The ‘Do Monkeys Smell Bad’ as a mnemonic phrase used to help students remember the required steps for completing long division tasks.
The adult took to US forum Reddit where they shared an image of the complicated homework – which they admitted had left them baffled beyond repair despite many attempts at solving it
‘Do’ helps to remember the word ‘divide’, which is the very first step taken to complete a long division equation.
The rest are as follows:
‘Monkeys’ represents multiply. After dividing, one must multiply the quotient by the divisor.
‘Smell’ is for subtract. Subtract the product from the previous step.
‘Bad’ relates to bring down. This last step requires you to bring down the next digit from the dividend to continue the process.
School leavers can hardly forget their teacher’s torturous requests to supply the workings of their long division answer within homework and exams.
This significant requirement ruled out cheating, as well as ensuring a student truly understood the task at hand.
Having shown how they broke down the larger division problem into smaller more palatable ones, including numerous lines showing subtraction and multiplication, the parent arrived at a final answer.
Several people took to the comments to reveal the correct answer and explain where the poster had gone
And while it was clear that the parent had put a lot of effort into the homework, their answer was off ever so slightly.
At the top of the maths sheet, the number ‘215.1’ was written.
However the correct answer is 215.25.
Several people took to the comments to explain why this was the correct answer and where the poster had gone wrong.
‘You [were] doing great up until you got a remainder of 1’ wrote one person. ‘That remainder doesn’t become 0.1. You still need to divide it by 4. One way to do this is to help yourself to the zero after the decimal point to give 1.0. Now continue your long division process’.
One person said simply, ‘At the end you put the 1 over 4 (1/4) which is the same as .25’.
One user offered a solution and encouraged the parent to ‘try again’, writing: ‘You brought up that 1 that you subtracted for some reason.
Try it again, but instead make the number you are dividing 861.00 (since the .00 is technically there as it is 0. You can always add on as many .0s as you need, though here it’s only 2). Just make sure that when you do it, you put the decimal for the answer number above where it is in the divided number so all the numbers line up’.
On the contrary, one user wrote: ‘Sad to see adults stymied by very simple math’.
Someone else pointed to a different reason for why the parent was struggling: ‘Step 1: Get some wide-ruled notebook paper. Do every step on a line.
This simple skill will help immensely with your organization as you progress into middle and high school math classes’ they wrote.
