Age of the captain

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The age of the captain is a mathematical word problem which cannot be answered even though there seems to be plenty of information supplied. It was given for the first time by Gustave Flaubert in a letter to his sister Caroline in 1841: [1] [2]

More recently, a simpler version has been used to study how students react to word problems:

A captain owns 26 sheep and 10 goats. How old is the captain? [4]

Many children in elementary school, from different parts of the world, attempt to "solve" this nonsensical problem by giving the answer 36, obtained by adding the numbers 26 and 10. [4] [5] It has been suggested that this indicates schooling and education fail to instill critical thinking in children, and do not teach them that a question may be unsolvable. [4] [5] However, others have countered that in education students are taught that all questions have a solution and that giving any answer is better than leaving it blank, hence the attempt to "solve" it. [4] [5]

You can also find this problem in Richard Rusczyk's "Introduction to Geometry" at the end of chapter 18 in the "extra" box, as well as in Evan Chen's "Euclidean Geometry in Mathematical Olympiads" at the beginning of chapter 5.

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References

  1. 1 2 Flaubert, Gustave; Lettre à Caroline, 16 mai 1841 Archived 2016-03-24 at the Wayback Machine , Correspondance, première série (1830–1850), G. Charpentier et Cie, Éditeurs, Paris, 1887
  2. 1 2 Flaubert, Gustave (1926–1954). Oeuvres complètes de Gustave Flaubert : correspondance (in French). Vol. 1. Paris. p. 140.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. "Mathematical Quotations – F". Math.furman.edu. Archived from the original on 2018-10-07. Retrieved 2018-05-24.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Verschaffel, L.; Greer, B.; de Corte, E. (2000). "Making Sense of Word Problems". Educational Studies in Mathematics . 42 (2): 211–213. doi:10.1023/A:1004190927303. JSTOR   3483286. S2CID   116924004.
  5. 1 2 3 Molina, Natalia; Strohmaier, Anselm; Reiss, Kristina (November 10, 2018). ""I added the numbers, it's math!" How sense-making in "age of the captain" problems differs between a mathematics classroom and a language classroom". British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics.