Bob CollinsIt’s been 10 years since Claire Longmoor, of Nottingham, England wrote up a test for her math students.
It was nothing particularly difficult. Like this question, perhaps:
Strawberry Pickers R Us employs 15 people to pick one field of strawberries in 10 hours. How many strawberry pickers do they need to pick one field of strawberries in three hours?
That’s not the sort of question that’s going to get a math teacher in England much attention, let alone get much attention 10 years from now.
This is:
Somehow, Doug Mataconis, a lawyer and blogger from Virginia, found Longmoor’s old quiz and posted the question this week on Twitter, which was aghast at the likely improper mixing of mathematics and art.
It raced around the Internet and into — wait for it — Claire Longmoor’s Twitter feed.
I wrote this!! How did you get this??? I am a maths teacher in Nottingham UK. Wrote this 10 years ago. Here is the original whole worksheet pic.twitter.com/jYX55GSBKz
— Claire Longmoor (@LongmoorClaire) October 11, 2017
It was a trick question “just to keep the kids on their toes,” she said.
The various responses to the tweet showed, again, how math brings out our best.
It also showed, again, how there’s always that one person, too.
