Allow me to explain the (possibly not obvious) reason why this fails.
Tracey is right with her answer, barring the "always" statement regarding rational and irrational. There is an exception, and that would be Pi squared, which remains irrational.)
At first glance, I thought the test makers had it wrong, (the mathematical sentence is correct) when I saw her next comment was wrong, which I would call a trick question because only half of the problem is wonky. And of course, the commenters on the blog where this was posted LOL'd about "hahaha, women and math = fail!" and then continued to comment on how the actual MATH was wrong.
(1.4142135623730950488016887242097 + 2.8284271297461900976033774484194)2 = 18. :D
HEY TEENAGE BOY:
FAIL.
Love, former FEMALE vice-president of Mu Alpha Theta.
Tracey is right with her answer, barring the "always" statement regarding rational and irrational. There is an exception, and that would be Pi squared, which remains irrational.)
At first glance, I thought the test makers had it wrong, (the mathematical sentence is correct) when I saw her next comment was wrong, which I would call a trick question because only half of the problem is wonky. And of course, the commenters on the blog where this was posted LOL'd about "hahaha, women and math = fail!" and then continued to comment on how the actual MATH was wrong.
(1.4142135623730950488016887242097 + 2.8284271297461900976033774484194)2 = 18. :D
HEY TEENAGE BOY:
FAIL.
Love, former FEMALE vice-president of Mu Alpha Theta.
- Spock is::
amused
'Oos dis bint, then?
stoney321- Laura Stone
- Hey, Don't Judge Me
Comments
Negative integers - there's a trick to it, but once you learn the rule, it becomes easy peasy. I LOVE this guy's math help site and send my kids to it all the time. Simple, to the point.
Speaking of points... *tangents your cosine*
(And evidently I'm fine with math, but suck at HTML...)
Edited at 2008-06-18 08:31 pm (UTC)
:D
*bakes muffins*
On this area unfortunately I'm a walking stereotype, thank goodness there's smart mathsy lady girl women like you out there.
It's the language of love. Geeky, glasses-adjusting, IMing love.
That said, I'm average at math. But I worship people who are good. ;-)
ILU.
ILU2.
I'm compelled to answer the actual question, though....
( 2½ + 8½ )2 is, in fact 18. But the comment was about squaring square roots and getting rational numbers. The reason she's wrong about the generalization (such as you can see it), relates to the middle term of a binomial expansion of ( a + b )2. 2ab, in this case, is 2*2½*8½, which has the fortunate answer of 2*16½, and that's rational. Since a*b is a square, the root is trivial. Other numbers won't necessarily be so kind. In fact, MOST other integers won't be quite as nice.
Her gender, which itself may be rational or irrational, aside, the problem is kinda neat.
We didn't get to do competitions when I was in - how fun! (Only two people were allowed into Ac Dec for math, and since the Pres. had a GPA of 5.1 and was a genius, I didn't get the A student slot. *G*)
Competitions are weird.... you do standard test types, then you go into a room where they put up a problem, and first two or three to solve it, correctly, get points. I never won the final award, but I was happy to have points at all. Some of those problems were brutal.
Me likey sexism even less.