Gosh. Tell me about it. We signed up for Noetic Challenge Math this week and there was this straightforward math question that should have been a piece of cake.
A wire is 80inches long. Sarah (or a name like that) cut some out to make an equilateral triangle, one side with a length of 12inches. Doug took the remainder and made a rectangle that had a length of 15inches. How long was the breadth?
In a flash, DS wrote down 8.5inches. It should be 7. And why?
He said he suddenly thought 12inches was 12 dots (there was a question about dots earlier in the paper). Since this is an equilateral triangle, the next side should have 11 dots, and the third side 10, giving a total of 33 dots. This magically transformed into inches again. And doing the math, his answer was 8.5 ...
Didn't know what to say. He looked so happy to have stumbled onto an "interesting" question!
