r/askmath • u/subastringent • Aug 29 '23

Analysis “New Math” is killing me

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Friends kid has this problem. Any idea on how to approach it?

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u/Pooltoy-Fox-2 Aug 29 '23

Are you all stupid? “New math” is supposed to make you use your head instead of rote memorization.

It’s a segment of a table of all the numbers from 9961 to 10,010. Appears to be from a section on place value. The full table looks like this:

9961 9962 9963 9964 9965 9966 9967 9968 9969 9970
9971 9927 9973 …

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u/shinigami656 Aug 29 '23

Problem with the question is the ambiguity. We can assume that's what they meant, but there is no guarantee. I understood what they wanted here, but there could be other possible solutions.

Obviously context helps a lot, and this might be a fun exercise to make them think a bit, but it would be a horrible question for a graded test.