https://which-chick.dreamwidth.org/ One a day, plus iron - Dreamwidth Studios Thu, 06 Nov 2025 19:35:18 GMT LiveJournal / Dreamwidth Studios which_chick personal https://v2.dreamwidth.org/12768057/3461971 https://which-chick.dreamwidth.org/ 95 95 https://which-chick.dreamwidth.org/778203.html Thu, 06 Nov 2025 19:35:18 GMT https://which-chick.dreamwidth.org/778203.html School has 120 students. 75 students play baseball, 60 students play soccer, 30 students play both. How many students do not play a sport at all?<br /><br />This problem was on my facebook, with folks arguing about the answer and shit. It's not that complicated, but the problem is badly written and makes people hate math.<br /><br />The problem says "75 students play baseball" but it MEANS that 75 students play <i>at least</i> baseball. Like, the 75 baseball-playing students might could include the 30 students who "play both" in that sum. We know this because if it was just add up the 75 baseballers and the 60 soccer-ers and the 30 all-rounders, the sum would be 165 students, which is more than the number of students in the school. It's possible that the issue here is obviously forty-five homeschoolers coming in to do sport at the school, but I've been told that making that sort of completely unwarranted assumption is <i>outside the scope of the math problem</i> and that I should not <i>be difficult</i>.<br /><br />Are we testing one's ability to do addition and subtraction or one's ability to reason? Is this a logic class or a math class? Argh. Fucking shitty math problems.<br /><br />Anyway, using our powers of logic (above) what the problem really means is "75 students play AT LEAST baseball and might play other sports" and "60 students play AT LEAST soccer and might play other sports" and then it says "30 students play both sports" but we're gonna read that as "Only 30 students play both sports" because otherwise we might as well just MAKE UP SHIT like a gang of forty-five homeschoolers coming in to do sport at the school. Damn, this is a poorly-worded math problem.<br /><br />So, we need the number of "students who play sports" as a whole... the 30 who play both sports plus the 75-30=45 who play just baseball and the 60-30=30 who play just soccer.<br /><br />30 both-sporters plus 45 baseballers plus 30 soccer-ers is 105.<br /><br />Now we can subtract 105 from 120. <br /><br />There are fifteen students who do not play sports.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=which_chick&ditemid=778203" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments https://which-chick.dreamwidth.org/778203.html math problem public 2