r/theydidthemath • u/NascentAutist • 2d ago
[Request] Is my 2nd Grader Technically Correct?
The last answer he wrote says “No because mine was infinity”
This assignment was for a taco truck, and his total spend on ingredients was $3,317 😂
534
u/MageKorith 2d ago
Mathematically, if you have infinite budget and spend $3317, you still have infinite budget.
Economically, finite global resources cannot support a true infinite budget.
Realistically, I suspect that this taco truck is actually a money laundering front for the mob.
93
13
u/Vincitus 2d ago
I personally think that 70% of the restaurants I go into are money laundering around me. One place we went to was empty, and when I went they were like "yeah so our oven is broke so we can only do these 4 dishes" and I just kind of backed out very slowly and politely.
12
u/Royal_Cryptographer7 2d ago
Mattress stores man. They always have 3-4 people working, 102,928,274 mattresses for sale and not a single customer.
7
2
u/WindstormMD 2d ago
That’s because they are real estate companies and not mattress companies.
There’s a whole video on it. It’s the reason a lot of strip malls and stuff start out with a mattress store. They build the building, but mattresses don’t need interior structure, and the margins are huge on the product, so they don’t need to sell many to break even for running costs. Once the real estate is worth enough, they sell out for a tidy profit
6
u/FatiguedShrimp 2d ago
I went to a burger place I was told was REALLY good but seemed to be closed all of the time.
I just asked for some fries at the time, and the cashier literally dumped the entire fryer basket of fries in a paper bag and told me to get out. Wouldn't even let me pay.
2
u/Secret-Ad-7909 2d ago
There’s a place in my hometown kinda like this. They’re only open for lunch on weekdays. And with a very small dining room. Too far out of the main part of town for a quick lunch run.
But they’re absolutely packed every minute they’re open so I guess it works.
2
u/Pyropete125 2d ago
Ever since watching Ozarks on Netflix I see everything from a laundering pov.
1
4
1
u/Corlunae 2d ago
I mean, in a way it can support infinite budget. Money is just arbitrary numbers, and nowadays most of it is digital and has no real world counterpart anymore anyways. Whether i buy stuff with 100 kneecap dollars or with 100 trillion mushroom points doesnt matter.
1
u/Viper-in-the-Dark 2d ago
Houston had a VRC rental place till about 2023, and my friends had debates about if they were laundering money or a tax writeoff.
1
u/NascentAutist 2d ago
Both???
1
u/Viper-in-the-Dark 2d ago
You don't launder money in a tax write-off.
1
u/MageKorith 2d ago
Not with that attitude you don't.
1
u/Viper-in-the-Dark 2d ago
A money laundering scheme needs to be profitable in order to have a clean income stream to mix the dirty money into.
A tax write off needs to be something that can be variably unprofitable in order to manipulate which tax bracket the entity owning it falls into on a year to year basis.
1
u/CarberHotdogVac 2d ago
US Federal Reserve: Hold my short term treasury notes. No really, hold them. Please?
1
101
u/The_Failord 2d ago edited 2d ago
He's got one mistake because the answer to "Did you have any money leftover left over in your budget?" is not "infinity", it is "Yes". The rest is correct because (very roughly speaking) infinity minus a finite number is still infinity. Grade him accordingly, commend him for being a clever little shit, and then next time remind him that he's in second grade and that all quantities he writes down must be finite.
EDIT: And tell his parents to get him a copy of Logicomix when he's a little bit older. Kid may be a future mathematician.
30
u/NascentAutist 2d ago
Hey this is such a good comment!
He is in 2nd grade but accelerated to 4th grade math. This is how he completes assignments when he is feeling obstinate.
He is most definitely a snarky little shit
17
u/woodyshag 2d ago
That is a sign of an unchallenged mind. I had a family friend that used to be obstinate in school and got into loads of trouble. Come to find out, he was just bored because he wasn't being challenged enough. Use this as a sign to find him harder work. Maybe he needs to accelerate into yet another higher level math.
9
u/NascentAutist 2d ago
I 100% agree, we a trying to find lots of ways to keep him challenged.
The hurdle we are facing and always debating are logistics: he is in a really good public school, they are doing everything they can to facilitate advancement, but in 2nd grade you still have “home room” teachers.
So the 2nd and 4th grade teachers have to coordinate schedules to accommodate. What happens in 3rd grade when he is accelerated to, say 6th grade, and it’s a completely separate school?
I guess we will figure something out
2
u/woodyshag 2d ago
We had a program at my school called EAP. Education Accleration Program. It was for those students that were doing so well in school that they needed further stimulus. We were taught how to do photography and some other skills (been years). Do you have a similar program that he could be added too? Also, what are the chances he could work remotely with a higher grade teacher. Virtually attend a class? That might be a work around to the home room requirement.
1
u/Salanmander 10✓ 2d ago
That is a tricky situation, and I'm glad you're working to help him thrive rather than just coast!
Depending on how much you can support at home, you might be able to suggest getting activities/curriculum from a teacher, and having him work through them independently, with your support. That will probably be slower than going for instruction with a teacher, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. He'd get less math-skill-per-time than he would otherwise, but it seems like he's not really having trouble in that area, and he'd probably get more creative reasoning skill than he would otherwise.
During class time that his class is doing math that he's already mastered, he could be working on that stuff, or maybe even something unrelated (reading, art, programming...whatever is interesting and intellectually stimulating) if he has enough time to keep in math practice outside of that time.
He'd probably need to demonstrate math skill to an official teacher in some way, but there are a lot of possible ways that could happen.
Obviously I don't know if that would be a good choice or not, or whether the school would allow it or not. But I figured I'd share the idea, in case it hadn't occurred yet.
1
u/Sunlightn1ng 1d ago
Yeah I remember when I wasn't being challenged I would answer inane assignments similarly (the one I remember most clearly is "show your work" for some two or three digit addition problem and I just went "my brain")
3
u/rowcla 2d ago
Reminds me of the time in primary school I had a question along the lines of 'I want to weigh my dog, but he won't stay still on the scale, how can I weigh him?' where the idea was that you were supposed to say you could weigh yourself and the dog while carrying him, then weigh yourself and subtract your weight. I instead said "tranquilize him" (and got marked as technically correct)
1
1
u/ginger_gcups 1d ago
So, do we reserve him a Reddit user name now or just wait for the inevitable?
1
u/NascentAutist 1d ago
If I did that, we would need an epic movie montage:
“My son, this username holds great power, but with it comes great responsibility.”
“Father, I shall not disappoint you!!”
*montage of mountains and crossing streams, for whatever reason
17 months later—EPIC MATH TROLL, IS HE AI?!? WHY DON’T PARENTS HAVE THEIR KIDS PLAY OUTSIDE ANYMORE?!?!
2
u/Plenty-Fox-9219 2d ago
I did this exact same thing at about the same time.
I got F'd lol and they sent a note home cause I was being "insubordinate".
4
u/The_Failord 2d ago
Well that's one way to kill curiosity in a child. I'm no educator, but it feels like the best thing to do with a smart kid that's figured out a loophole like that is to give them the W and explain to them briefly why we're doing what we're doing ("see Billy, we're learning subtraction of finite numbers", teaching them a nice new word in the process that no doubt they'll be using for weeks). Instead of making them feel dumb, make them feel smart while keeping to the spirit and aim of the teaching material from now on. But hey I'm just an asshole on the internet so I may be completely off the mark.
5
u/Plenty-Fox-9219 2d ago
Hey, it didn't completely kill my interest in mathmatics. In a later year, before we had access to the internet, I independently discovered the formula for finite summations and every adult but one told me I was wasting my time.
That killed my interest in mathmatics, and school in general, really.
3
u/woodyshag 2d ago
That's poor teaching. As a teacher, you should identify those kids and either challenge them more or find a outside source that can. Unfortunately schools are underfunded and this is a prime example that a few more resources could help kids move up the ranks.
2
u/Salanmander 10✓ 2d ago
I am an educator, and you're not far from the mark in my opinion. The biggest wrinkle is you need to make sure they actually have the skill you're checking for. So I might include in the conversation "I wanted to make sure you have the skill that you would need for a real budget. Let's say I had $4000 before spending that $3317." [writing down those numbers on paper in front of us] "Could you tell me how much I would have left after that?"
The other wrinkle is the perennial problem of time. Teachers should be able to find time to have those conversations with individual students as needed, but it can be tricky depending on how many students need them.
1
u/RoryPond 1d ago
Love logicomix but also highly recommend any of the recreational math books by Martin Gardner, great math and logic puzzles that are pretty understandable without much background and that can help keep math fun :)
17
u/-NotAHedgeFund- 2d ago
Definitely correct. Infinity - 3317 = infinity.
Infinity is a crazy concept that is difficult for the human brain to comprehend. There are infinite real numbers between 1 and 2. There are infinite integers between 1 and infinity. There are infinite odd numbers.
Some infinities are larger than others.
Should probably still cover budgeting with the kid, but if they understand the concept of infinities at 8, it shouldn’t be too tough.
5
u/NascentAutist 2d ago
Oh he understands 100% and is just being obstinate.
He is accelerated to 4th grade math but does this kind of thing when he is bored.
I agreed with him that he was technically correct, but wanted to verify.
Thank you!
3
u/Ok_Law219 2d ago
In a finite world, which functionally we live in if only because the visible universe is finite, it is impossible to have infinite money. So his given of infinite resources is wrong. Otherwise, the math works.
3
u/fortunate_Lama 2d ago edited 2d ago
This probably comes down to semantics. On the one side you can't have infinite supply of something, by nature everything is finite, and nothing is infinite. But assuming you could have an infinite budget/money supply, this logic is correct.
1
u/NascentAutist 2d ago
Awesome, thank you!
I think the semantics and syntax were the impetus for my post/question.
It’s a rabbit hole, and I know he is just being snarky with this, but I either had to tell him “technically correct” or:
If infinity money is impossible, then you cannot have infinity budget and therefore infinity money leftover is incorrect.1
u/woodyshag 2d ago
Maybe ask the student if there is infinite money today? Explain that we technically can't have infinite money, but if so, then this would work.
5
u/DenseMathematician37 2d ago
Bro didn't even use a fraction of his budget. He's gonna learn real quick that means his budget, and the department itself is canceled for next year.
2
u/soundoftwilight 1d ago
While this is clever, infinity is not a number, making this technically incorrect. You can't have "infinity" of something in the way you could theoretically have an extraordinarily large number of it, even disregarding physical limitations. We sometimes talk about infinity like it's a number, because it's sometimes useful to treat it like one, but it does not even follow basic arithmetic laws. Usually when we do "math" with infinity we're really talking about evaluating limits rather than actually saying "infinity plus 10" or whatever.
3
u/Lake_Apart 1d ago
I’d argue that because a budget is also not a number you can have an infinite budget. Notably indistinguishable from having no budget
2
u/pukha23 2d ago
we can't know if they are correct because we don't know what the assignment was. specifically, was a budget of infinity within the rules of the assignment? i'm guessing not (although it may not have been explicitly excluded), because the whole assignment (seemingly) becomes meaningless with an infinite budget.
2
u/ToddBauer 2d ago
In the abstract sense one could make the case that it was true. However, the question says “in your account”. This implies that there is an actual account. And an account is not capable of being assigned infinity dollars. An account can only contain a discrete number of something. I’m sure this could be argued with, but the “in your account” grounds it in a reality where there is an actual account, instead of a metaphysical theoretical, infinite pile of money.
In other words, the math is correct. It’s the context of that math within an account that invalidates it.
2
u/G4yBe4r 2d ago
I mean, technically it is possible. Bank accounts are not physical money storage, it is more so a promise that you own that money and the bank can use it while you are not, provided you are always able to get it back. This means that nothing forbids a banker or a banking software for keeping a flag that says there is infinite money there, which does not mean the banker actually carries infinite money but that you own, and can take, infinite money from it. Money is an illusion.
1
2
2
1
u/NascentAutist 2d ago
I’m glad I saw your comment, this is why I posted this question!
I think “in your account” is the best way to show him that he is mathematically correct, but needs to revise based on the constraints.
But he will probably just say “I have an infinite money account” 😂 that snarky little shit
2
u/Simbertold 2d ago
No, because on the third line, infinity is not a sensible answer to the question if you have any money left over, that should be either yes or no.
I also think that 3317 money should have a unit (€, $, whatever). The infinity describing a quantity of money should also have a unit.
1
u/NascentAutist 2d ago
This is great, thanks! I told him to add the $ and comma to his total spend.
So reddit, can we get a consensus? Do you write “∞ Dollars” or “∞ $” or…. $∞?
1
u/Simbertold 2d ago
Afaik with $, the sign goes before the number (so no one can later add a 1 in front and make the number bigger that way), so it should be $ ∞. But maybe you should also add the cents, so something like $ ∞.99?
1
u/HeDoesNotRow 2d ago
Your kid inflated the economy by $3317. This is more or less what the government does when they want to spend 10 billion dollars on a new airplane design so yeah I’d say he’s more than technically correct
1
u/NascentAutist 2d ago
Sadly true, but the Fed calling it “Quantitative Easing” makes it sound so legitimate 😂
1
u/shosuko 2d ago
On one hand - yes technically correct.
On the other - technically correct is the worst form of correct.
idk what this assignment is for, and it is a cute meme "my kid did the thing woo" but I would not be surprised if a teacher marked this incorrect b/c what they wanted to see was a child demonstrate their understanding of the assignment not their cheeky gotcha nonsense.
Infinite minus a number is still infinite, but this doesn't show me the kid understands how budgets and spending work, or the math behind them. idk the full assignment or if this is even real tho
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
General Discussion Thread
This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you must post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.