“What’s the correct answer?” 7-year-old daughter’s math problem that embarrassed a math professor at Oxford University
Photo Source = Twitter
[아시아경제 나한아 기자] Oxford University mathematics professor said, “I don’t know how to answer my 7-year-old daughter’s math homework.”
The protagonist of this story is Professor Kit Yeates, who received a doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University, and is the author of ‘Power to Think with Mathematics’ who is the head of the Institute of Mathematical Biology at Bath University.
Professor Yeats posted a math problem on Twitter on the 24th (Korean time) saying, “Please help my daughter with the homework she received on Monday.” The problem he raised was to answer whether the proposition of’there are two right angles here’ is true or false for the semicircle painting.
Professor Yeats said, “It’s not a joke. I don’t know what answer to give to my daughter,” he said.
Netizens who saw the tweet gave various answers. Some answered’false’, but most answered’true’. Their logic is that the radius and tangent of the sphere meet vertically, so the two are correct.
However, to explain this process to a 7-year-old daughter, it was necessary to discuss differentiation and the like. For this reason, netizens criticized “Who gives this homework to 7 years old?”
However, the answer to this question was’false’. It was intended to show that there was no right angle through a curved circle.
Yeats said, “I’m going to ask next week’s college math sophomores what they think.”
Reporter Han-ah Na [email protected]