Math PSLE

Oh yes, i know this year's PSLE is tough. Especially the math paper. Most of you people reading my blog took that paper like donkey years ago??? Ok lets have a look at what some people have to say

Question

My daughter had problem with this Maths question, and from details given, may not be solvable. Anyone can help solve? I remember a couple of years back, there was an unsolvable question too.

From what she can recall, something like:

6/14 of chairs in hall are in rows of 13.

1/2 of chairs are in rows of 7.

There are 112 more chairs in rows of 7

Balance of chairs are stacked up.

What is total number of chairs?

1st Response:

This forum is indeed crawling with retards who failed their PSLE exams. I have been solving such easy questions which you morons termed as difficult since my PAP Kindergarten days.

2 rows of 7 makes 14 which is 1 more than 13.

So, 112 more in rows of 7 than rows of 13 means 112x2=224 rows of 7 and 112 rows of 13. (224x7=1568)-(112x13=1456)=112

Obviously you daughter can't remember he fractions correctly which rendered this question unsolvable.

2nd Response:

uncle say there are many ways to solve a problem although there are many adults not able to solve this problem.. including university professors.. do you call them retards???.. but we are paying the professors more, you know why??..and the adults may be earning more than the primary school teachers...

not to mention those so-called foreign=talents... can they solve it??

these kind of questions look more like quizzes ...should not even appear in a school exam to squash a child's confidence.. because there are many ways to solve the same problem..

3rd Response:

The answer is 114 x 14.

if you put it in equation form

(7/14 - 6/14 ) x total = 114.

total = 114 x 14

today I very free mark PSLE paper

4th Response:

ok.. since you are probably sleeping.. uncle will tell you... using algebra method.. i guess this is what those learned university professors will do..

let x be the total number of chairs, then 1/2 of x minus 6/14 of x equals 112 which gives x=1568 as the total number of chairs... see??? your answer blow up by 112.. which may be the ''standard'' primary school answer... so you call that smart answer or good answer or the only answer???

5th response:

This problem is correctly deemed unsolvable because one of the rows would not turn out to be a whole number when these figures are represented and solved using simultaneous algebraic equations. One possibility for this is that '6/14' is a typo, since students are always taught to write fractions in the most reduced form - in this case 3/7.

Your answer only satisfies the third requirement (112 more chairs are in rows of 7). Using the total number of chairs in your solution (1568 + 1456 = 3048), the number 3048 does not satisfy requirements 1 & 2: (6/14 of all chairs in 13s and 1/2 of of chairs in 7s)

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6/14 of chairs in hall are in rows of 13.

1/2 of chairs are in rows of 7.

There are 112 more chairs in rows of 7

Balance of chairs are stacked up.

What is total number of chairs?>>

This forum is indeed crawling with retards who failed their PSLE exams. I have been solving such easy questions which you morons termed as difficult since my PAP Kindergarten days.

2 rows of 7 makes 14 which is 1 more than 13.

So, 112 more in rows of 7 than rows of 13 means 112x2=224 rows of 7 and 112 rows of 13. (224x7=1568)-(112x13=1456)=112

Obviously you daughter can't remember he fractions correctly which rendered this question unsolvable.

6th Response:

why so complicated??

Use Model- drawing!!

1 unit = 112 (7-6)

14 units = 112X 14

that's all!!!

7th Response

I don't know the syllabus, but Simultaneous Equations were taught in Sec.2 for 14 yr olds more than 20 years ago. Not really surprising if they now want 12 yr olds to learn this for PSLE, although I can't imagine the damage on pri. 6 students minds, particularly those who can't think math.

Also, the question here was provided by someone's daughter, who might not have remembered all the figures correctly. We don't really know if this is what appeared in the exam paper.

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woahlau.. primary school where got so complicated.. anyway.. my compliment to you ...

My Verdict:

This is really crap. I cannot believe primary school PSLE math question can be so debatable. Believe it then. You need tonnes of brainpower to come up with proper reasoning skills to solve these question without the ALMIGHTY ALGEBRA. Worse still, as a tuition teacher, I need to EXPLAIN all these weird logic to my primary school tutee. Tell me. How can they ever understand? Just look at all the responses above. Some even wrote their simultaneous equation wrongly. You have to account for the 13s and 7s! Response 5 is correct.