Lower Elementary:
Question: Krysta started the day with 32 grapes. Later, she ate half of the grapes for lunch. She ate half of the remaining grapes as a snack. How many grapes does Krysta have left now?
Answer: 8 grapes
Solution: Krysta ate half of her 32 grapes for lunch. Half of 32 is 16. She ate 16 grapes, so she has 16 grapes left over. She ate half of the remaining 16 grapes for a snack. Half of 16 is 8. She ate 8 grapes, so she has 8 grapes left.
Upper Elementary:
Question: The perimeter of a square is 24 feet. What is the area of the square?
Answer: 36 feet squared
Solution: The perimeter is the sum of all the sides. In a square, all sides are the same. So what number, 4 times, is 24? 6 four times is 24, so the side lengths of the square are 6 feet. The area of a square is length times width. Since both the length and the width are 6, 6 × 6 = 36. The area of the square is 36 feet squared.
Middle School:
Question: What is two-thirds of a quarter of a half of 120?
Answer: 10
Solution: One way to do this problem is to work from right to left. The left part is half of 120. Half of 120 is 60. The next part is to take a quarter of 60. A quarter of 60 is 15. The final part is two-thirds of 15. Two-thirds of 15 is 10. So, two-thirds of a quarter of a half of 120 is 10.
Algebra and Up:
Question: When you flip a weighted coin, it has a 75% chance of landing on heads. What is the probability of landing 3 heads in a row with this weighted coin?
Answer: 27/64
Solution: To find the probability of landing 3 heads, we need to find the probability of landing 1 head and raise it to the third power. 75% can be rewritten as 3/4. So, 3/4 × 3/4 × 3/4 = 27/64. The probability of landing 3 heads in a row with this weighted coin is 27/64.
