This child’s maths homework has got people hollering into next week

Poke Staff. Updated October 18th, 2022

The older your kids get, the tougher it becomes to help them with their homework until they eventually reach a point where they stop asking you.

But it really doesn’t help when they get set questions like this, a maths task that has just gone viral on Reddit because, well, look.

Here’s how Redditor SoverignOne introduced it.

‘My 10yr old/5th grade homework. Instructions say to round each decimal to the nearest whole number. My son insists the answer is 0.

‘According to the instructions, he is correct. I explained that you can’t paint 37 walls with 0 gallons of paint.

‘Messaged his math teacher. She said the answer is 0.’

And here’s exactly what people made of that.

‘That’s a dumb question. What should happen is multiple 37 x 0.34 and round that answer to the nearest whole number.’
refmike

‘Any other method is better than rounding .34 to 0.’
SoverignOne

‘Well it is not wrong the .34 is rounded to 0. But you are correct in saying you need to have more than 0 gallons of paint. The teacher agreeing with your son scares me.’
refmike

‘Sounds like the instructions, “round to the nearest whole number”, and the question,”how many gallons of paint do you need” are contradictory.

‘How many do you need is (almost?) always a round up situation. The teacher should know when to round up vs round to nearest.’
Most-Resident

‘Paint sellers HATE this guy! Learn to paint your house using 0 gallons.’
-Fuse

‘Marvin just gonna chill on the couch now instead of paint.’
randomdude5566

‘They’re having him round the 0.34 before executing the multiplication?’
Little-Aardvark3540

‘If the instructions state you round before the multiplication, then this is impossible to be anything other than zero. It’s literally stated in the instructions. Who tf came up with this problem lol..’
MidnightExpresso

We’re with this person.

‘I’m still struggling to get beyond “about many gallons.”
robbeech

Took us back to this one from a few weeks back.

Source Reddit u/SoverignOne