It's Poll Week, Apparently

[thefourthvine]

My nine-year-old nephew has to do a ridiculous poll for his math class, and he needs lots of responses. It's one question. Anyone feel like taking it? Please? I would thank you! My sister would thank you! My nephew would also thank you!

(Added bonus humor for anyone who has ever taken a math class: his teacher assigned this question, and also assigned him to determine the mean, mode, and median of answers. If you take it, you'll see why we are all deeply amused by this. Statistics: UR TEACHIN IT RONG.)

ETA: SurveyMonkey broke! The question was as follows:

[Poll #1354750]

Feel free to take it if you haven't already, and thanks again!

Comments

[geeklite.livejournal.com]

The mean will be red and a half, I predict!

[ubixtiz.livejournal.com]

Orange?

[ekaterinn.livejournal.com]

Obviously, blue is in mode this year, dahling! Or is that not what you meant?

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

It makes as much sense - no, wait, more sense - than trying to find the mathematical mode of this set! (But it's GREEN. GREEN is in mode. *shakes fist at you and suspects you of voting for blue*)

[obsessive24.livejournal.com]

Oh, that just makes me sad. Teaching everywhere just goes down the shitter.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of afraid to ask my sister if this is the new, improved math class she fought so hard to get the kid in. If it is, obviously, we will have to take the earthling and move to a country where PEOPLE CAN TEACH MATH.

[obsessed1.livejournal.com]

I nearly spat water all over my screen.

Witch color indeed.

*snerks*

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*g* He's nine, and he prefers math to, well, everything else. Witch/Which is beyond him.

[incidental-fire.livejournal.com]

AAAArgh. MUST NOT GO FIND TEACHER TO THROTTLE!!! AAAAArgh.

(Though I would be interested in seeing what the mode is.)
(Though I think that makes it worse - sure, you can find the mode, but clearly the teacher doesn't really know what *any* of those mean! Aghsdfjsdhj.)
(If you find out, I would love to hear how exactly the teacher calculates the mean and median for the survey. I mean, my head might explode, but I might have to risk it.)

[indywind]

you MUST post what the clueless teacher gives for mean and median.

::repeated headdesk::

[norah.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's just fucking SAD. And, um, the mean would be...shit brown, if you're using tempera. Regardless of outcome. The median & mode might be more clearly identifiable. WHAT.

*edited because I cannot brain my fingers the way they need to type*

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

It is both funny and sad, in my opinion. At least the teacher, after it was pointed out to her, AGREED that she had screwed up this assignment. (Which, boy, did she.)

I think "brown" is an excellent answer to give. I will suggest it to Z.

[china_shop]

Hee!

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Sad but funny! Or funny but sad! I am not sure which.

[arboretum]

I predict mud brown :D

and the survey has been duly filled out~

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Thank you! And, yes, brown seems an inevitable outcome. *g*

[vass]

Oh dear. That's just sad.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

It is indeed. Join me in despairing for the future of education, won't you?

[bitter-crimson.livejournal.com]

WOW THAT TEACHER IS REALLY DUMB

UNLESS THEY ARE TRYING TO LINE THE COLORS UP IN A GRADIENT, OR SOMETHING. IDK.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how, precisely, you could convert this data into something that might have a mean, but, frankly, I think the effort is doomed.

And I'm going to pretend that she was just really, really tired that day, or else I will succumb to despair.

[svmadelyn.livejournal.com]

*cries at the "statistics" at work here*

I took the poll anyway. Poor nephew.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*weeps along with you*

And thank you!

[jamjar.livejournal.com]

Ow. This actually hurts my heart a little.

[supremegoddess1.livejournal.com]

ditto.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_medley_/]

Aw, it's kind of adorable that he spelled "which" two different ways, neither of them the, well, standard way. *g* (Statistics--teaching it SO VERY WRONG, but I get enough flail over the educational system when I see what my seven-year-old niece brings home for homework.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

His spelling is adorably idiosyncratic! Yeah, he's more of a math kid than a language kid. *g*

Statistics--teaching it SO VERY WRONG, but I get enough flail over the educational system when I see what my seven-year-old niece brings home for homework.

...Should I ask? *worried*

[marici.livejournal.com]

Pre-break his brain! My brother and I have both been disciplined in math classes for asserting that the odds of an event happening at least once over the course of X tries is not equal to the odds of the event happening in one try times the number of tries. Be sure your nephew knows this one well enough to stand his ground and get written up like us.

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

So if you roll a dice six times you're NOT guaranteed of getting all six numbers once each? Wow, who'd of thunk it? *grin*

[dzurlady.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. But at least he will get a large number of responses!

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much the strategy, here. He won't have a mean, but his frequencies will be awesome! *g*

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

Done! I'm amused that he's using Survey Monkey, which we also use for our Big Serious Studies at work.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*snerk* I'm guessing you guys use the paid version, though. We discovered the hard way that free Survey Monkey times out after 100 responses.

[ratcreature]

Heh, so they teach color theory with statistics? Though it is kind of hard for nine year olds to have to calculate mixed colors with percentages. I mean, I suppose the easiest way to have normed numerical scales to find out for colors would be using RGB values, but of course those don't mix like solid colors children are used to... (I'm probably overthinking this.) OTOH maybe he can use it as a pretense to make a mess with finger paint for an experimental approach.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I think the teacher should be required to delve into color theory if she's going to have assignments like this. (Though I'm sort of afraid of what she might teach, actually.)

Finger paint seems like an excellent solution to this problem, actual. A visual mean!

[jamethiel]

....

WHUT?

(Seriously, I did ONE semester of maths at uni and then dropped it as soon as humanly possible, but I can tell you this is wrong.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I know! This is not abstruse! I'm somewhat worried about the person teaching my nephew math, now.

[splintercat.livejournal.com]

Adorable! Taken!

Wow, okay, way to go, education system. This reminds me of the time that someone at the bank my mother works for explained that they had had 20% growth that quarter, because each of the four branches had had 5% growth. *facepalm*

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

And, oh god, ow ow ow. If you work in a bank, you should probably be slightly better at numbers than that. (Although my father once got in a hectic battle with a cashier at the grocery store because she insisted that if the bill was $30.73, and my father had provided $40.03, the resulting change would be $9.34. He didn't even care if the change was RIGHT, he just wanted her to acknowledge that it should end in zero.)

[macey-muse.livejournal.com]

...lol

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Your icon makes me happier than I can say. <3!

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

Witch indeed?

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*g*

[illariy.livejournal.com]

What, what, what?! Please post the teacher's attempt at an explanation. :-)

I'm a lurker who lurks in your recs posts but apparently feels compelled to speak up about the Very Wrong Maths. ;-)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

The teacher has admitted she was wrong. She's asked him just to answer the questions he can answer. Which would be the mode. I expect he will also throw in some frequencies for free.

I'm a lurker who lurks in your recs posts but apparently feels compelled to speak up about the Very Wrong Maths. ;-)

Hi, lurker! It's good to meet you. And I totally understand. Very Wrong Math can bring anyone out of hiding. *g*

[marginaliana]

Aw, both are closed now and I cannot see the apparently horrific maths. But I'm laughing very hard at the comments here.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I have re-created the poll in LJ poll format. LJ polls don't close unless you ask them to!

So if you want to behold the horror, just see above. And I think you will find the "math" very special indeed. Oh yes.

[reginagiraffe]

Awww, I missed it. They're both closed.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Sorry! My friends' awesomeness overwhelmed Survey Monkey. I have re-created the poll as a LiveJournal poll (http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/99739.html), if you'd like to behold the horror.

[adbaculum.livejournal.com]

Closed again! Aww, now I want to know what the ridiculous question was.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Apparently my friends are just Too Awesome for Survey Monkey. I have re-created the poll here on LJ (http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/99739.html) so that you can see the question for yourself. Special poll is special!