Can anyone solve this maths problem?

[kid]

A friend has asked for help to solve this problem and so far, we are completely baffled.

Work out in the least shots how to get £5 with these numbers.
£1.50, 60p, 30p, 15p, 6p, 3p

There are no further instructions but we assume it's some sort of trick question.

I will definitely let you know what they say the answer is.

was there any other questions on the worksheet? im very intrigued on the "shots" in the question. xx

"I drank 5 shots and was sure I had worked out how to get £5 with those numbers. Unfortunately when I had sobered up it didn't actually work."

Your friend just has to write in the homework diary that the question is too ambiguous, poorly worded and she has no idea what the teacher wants.

The question refers to "numbers" but these are monetary amounts and as everyone else has pointed out you cannot multiply money by money.

If these were just numbers, then the answer could be found. Typo, perhaps?

What a stupid question. There aren't coins in existence of the amounts given; and unless you gamble the money or buy something with it and then sell it for a profit, you can't make more than is already there (which is £2.64). Even if they were amounts written on cans which you had to shoot in order to win, it wouldn't work, unless you didn't actually win what was written on the can (or had to take off the amount you paid to do the game in the first place, an amount that you haven't been told in the question....). The question shouldn't have been about money, or there is a large bit of the question missing...

It is a trick question. My answer, which should be within the grasp of a Y4 would be:

£5 is 500p. 500 is not a multiple of three. All the other amounts of money are multiples of three, so it is not possible to get £5 using these quantities of money.

I don't think the problem solving part of the question is too hard. I give these questions to Y4 classes all the time and they're fine with it. They usually understand that you should start with the biggest number first and get as close as possible then jiggle the other numbers around.

We always talk about how we tackled the question and what would be the quickest way to reach an answer.

The problem with this question is that it's badly worded and seems to have no solution?

Three suggestions:

1. Strictly, there is no exactly in the question. If you have £6 you have £5. Therefore the answer is 4 'shots': 3 lots of 1.50 and then 1.50 or 60p.

1. Pupils should sometimes be set problems with no 'correct' answer, because real-life number work is like that. What would be being looked for was method-repated subtractions starting with the largest which fits into what is left. Actually, this sort of problem is much closer to real-life than the ones that work.

1. The teacher has culled this from a broader set of questions and made, gawd help us, an error!

There is neither an exactly in the question nor an "as close as possible." So, strictly, the question still doesn't make sense. And that's before you wonder why it refers to numbers, not amounts of money (are the p symbols supposed to represent pence and the £ symbol something else, other than £?); and what shots are when they are at home.

Basically, I still object to getting as close as possible to something with amounts of money that don't represent coins - they are just random numbers. So why refer to money at all, let alone shots???? Is the question about money or not? And if it is, then why refer to random amounts of money? There is nothing real at all about telling yourself you have £1.50, 60p, 30p, 15p, 6p and 3p available to you, as you don't - you would never have added your money up into these random bits from the coins that you have. Nor would you have set yourself such a silly challenge in real life. If the amounts aren't real money and they are referred to merely as numbers, then whey treat them in any way like money and not, eg, get well over the £5 sought in just one go by timesing £1.50 with 60p? Why waste your time adding up several £1.50s, as though you have several of these random numbers available to you to add up and not just one of them?

I reckon £1.50x60p= £90p, where p represents any number you fancy, not a pence sign at all.

I think the question is a really silly one. I can understand if its a trick question for adults, but surely its not a great idea to do a trick question with no real answer to 8-9 year olds.

Hopefully, the teacher will give the answer to this question during the week and I'll report back when they do.

Oh, and £ can mean anything you want, too. Because none of it is real money.

It's not a trick question, it's a poor question - there's a difference, in that one is a little bit clever and the other is so badly worded that no-one can work out what the trick was supposed to be in the first place.

I don't think it's a well worded question, as if you are working with pots of money, you can only add and subtract, and it doesn't work and doesn't lend itself to creative thinking.

If it's more of a Countdown question (ie make 500 from 150, 60, 30, 15, 6 and 3, using any operation) it can be done (30x15=450, 150/3=50, 450+50=500).

I thought the trick element to it could be that you don't have to get £5 exactly but you have to get at least £5.
Or that you could use one of the other amounts as change so that you do end on £5 if thats possible.
I gave up trying to work out the answer already tbh.

Stupid question. Why use money? You can't multiply money, so you can't get anywhere near $5 (no pound sign on my keyboard). Even if you could multiply money (and I refuse to accept that you can) you can't get $5.