Seen SOTI:
…and according to the headline, only a “maths genius” can solve it in under 30 seconds.
WTF? I’m no math genius, and it took me about 5 seconds to solve it:
x = 2, y = 1; ergo 4xy = 8
This is not to show off my mathematical prowess, but to decry the fact that so simple an algebraic puzzle apparently requires “genius” to solve it.
Are we truly getting more stupid as a species?
“Are we truly getting more stupid as a species?”
Well, sorta; but it’s not genetic, it’s political.
Children born with decent intelligence are being systematically enstupidated by government schools.
I can be a bit sensitive about my poor mental maths skills. It took me all is ten seconds. Maybe geniuses aren’t as bright as they used to be?
“Are we truly getting more stupid as a species?”
Not really, just the “smart people”.
The bright kids are dragged back so the dolts in class can “catch up.”
“Are we truly getting more stupid as a species?”
What could possibly go wrong when a species has highly intelligent and energetic people who create a civilization that allows stupid and lazy people to survive and breed?
Every horse and cattle breeder in the world knows the answer.
took me about 5 seconds to solve it:
=========
What took you so long? lol j/k
Yeah, it seems overall, people are getting more and more stupid, and lazy.
// more and more stupid, and lazy. //
“Lazy” alone is enough to explain it. Intellectual activity is activity.
.
Kids today using Common Core math to overly complicate things.
I think age and wisdom have a lot to do with it. My teenage daughter is amazed whenever I do quick math in my head. But I couldn’t hold a candle to my old-man who with only a high school diploma seemed like Rain Man to me.
Exactly – Most of us didn’t bother to actually work through the Algebra. We just plugged in a test number and “Saw” the solution. Some worked through the steps in our head. My 20 years of SQL coding ( which is mostly just Algebra ) may have helped.
But the people burdened by common core New Math get bogged down in some overly complex “Solution” that they never really understood well because the people teaching it also didn’t really understand it either.
As Heinlein pointed out in the 1980’s, “We’ve gone from teaching Latin and Greek in High Schools to Bonehead English in the universities.”
Since you’ve been exposed to academia more recently than I have, I’m pretty sure you’d say things have gone downhill from there.
Took about 10 seconds but I’m a little under the weather and I haven’t had coffee yet. (I can hear my wife loudly doing dishes, which means that if I go in the kitchen I will get shanghaied. )
Sorry, you failed the real test. “Can I (the OP), manipulate people into doing something that gives me attention by putting some blatantly stupid comment on this post, thus boosting my ego or bank balance through page hits?”
This. Pretty much all of these types of posts are shameless engagement farming. (Including this one on this blog, it seems 🙂
The average IQ has probably stayed the same.
The brightest are trying to raise the average but since we don’t have cave bears and saber tooth tigers eating the dolts, it is hard to make much change when n=7.5 billion
They told me there’d be no math, dammit!
Algebra is just mathematical manipulation to get any answer you want. Kinda like statisticians . . .
I did it differently.
Solve for (x) and (y) first.
Add the two equations to eliminate (y):
(x+y)+(x−y)=3+1
2x = 4 implies x = 2
Now substitute x=2 into the first equation:
2+y= 3 implies y=1
So, x=2 and y=1
Next, calculate (xy):
xy = 2×1=2
Finally, find (2xy):
2xy = 2×2=4
Thus, the value of (2xy) is:
4
I’ve spent many many hours of my life jotting down measurements in the “N x N” format. The only trickery in that “puzzle” is for those of us who had to apply a few seconds of thought to recognize ‘x’ as a variable, not the multplication symbol, in the third equation.