I doubt this is really a problem for anyone. If it is, that child either will quickly adapt or will need serious remedial math help anyway.

It's good for people to be exposed to names they would supposedly "never encounter" so that when such names are actually encountered, as they will be at some point, they won't seem odd. For a melting pot, culture here in the U.S. can seem awfully insular at times. There's a difference between disliking the inclusion of other cultures and it being a math instructional issue.

sqrt( (1416 + 165*cos(A))^2 + (165*sin(A))^2 ) yards

Where A is the angle turned to go toward the shop after reaching the library. That's the answer they were expecting, right?

That's the answer if you want to get a B on the problem. An A requires using Taxicab geometry.

Good point; there are many unknowns, but streets are possibly involved. I feel strongly that any proper answer would take into account the geographic layout of the area, as well as the any curvature of the Earth surface of the planet or planetoid, if on a body massy enough for gravitation to exert such an effect, and the implied detour distance to pick up one's spacesuit before heading out of the airlock otherwise. Sadly, such suggestions drop like lead balloons in a vacuum when advanced during an educational team meeting.

Can we even be certain that this trip took place on planet Earth?

Not homework, but if you want to see some truly awful, fully subjective questions- look at the new Smarter Balance Assessments that are based on common core. I can only imagine how bad this is going to be for some of our out of the box thinkers! It's like someone took the Pineapple and the Hare and got all excited to write similar questions!

One I saw the other day is a short story for 4th grade about bunnies in a field eating clover. You write the next paragraph and finish the story "in a logical way".

My son, in his gore obsession, said that he'd write about a wild lawnmower killing the bunnies but they don't die. They become zombie bunnies who seek their revenge on the farmer night after night.

Yeah... how does that get graded on their rubric?

http://www.smarterbalanced.org/sample-items-and-performance-tasks/

Scroll down to "Explore Sample Items".

I think it's safe to assume that this is a bad way of phrasing a linear math question, but even then it's still a failure, because they don't even bother to indicate whether this is an addition or a subtraction problem. Was the library further from the house, or the shop? Just because she stopped at the library first doesn't mean it's closer.

- You can bring books into a shop, but you can't bring many things you might buy at an unspecified type of shop into a library.

- Going to your furthest destination first means you're unencumbered for a greater portion of your trip.

Those were my thoughts as well. DS was unfortunately stuck with a teacher who had only the fuzziest grasp of math concepts, and was careless to boot. She marked him wrong for writing "Not enough information to answer" and drawing a diagram showing a circle containing points where the shop could have been.

I remember that. I hereby award your son and his teacher some emoticons!

(For your son for his analysis)

(For his teacher's reaction)

Yesss! I knew if we just kept plugging, our advocacy efforts would be rewarded someday.

If anything, I think the other question I posted is even worse.