Oct 23 2009
Are You Smarter Than A 12-year-old?
For those of you who missed last night’s episode of BlogTV, you missed the great fun we had playing “Are You Smarter Than A 12-Year-Old, where 31-year old private banker faced off with a 12-year-old school boy.
10 questions, 40 minutes later, the 12-year-old boy emerged triumphant, having answered 4 questions correctly. The 31-year-old banker managed only 1 correct question.
So do you think you’re smarter than a 12-year-old? Here are the 10 questions we posed to our two wonderfully brave contestents.
QUESTION 1
Bryan invited 20 more boys than girls to a party. 3/4 of the boys and 2/3 of the girls came. 19 people didn’t come. How many people did he invite?
QUESTION 2
Of the visitors in a museum, 40% are children, 3/4 of the adults are women.
a) what is the ratio of children:men:women.
b) the second day, children number increased by 20%, adults number remain the same but women is 3/5 of adult. if there are 336 more children than women, how many visitors on second day
QUESTION 3
The figure below, not drawn to scale is made up of a big circle, two semicircles, two quadrants and two squares.
a) Find the perimeter of the shaded figure
b) find the area of the shaded figure
QUESTION 4
A millipede is climbing up a wall. For every 3cm it climbs, it slips by 1cm. It takes 3 seconds to climb 1 cm and 1 second to slip by 1cm.
a) How far would the millipede have climbed after 1 minute?
b) How long would the millipede take to climb 56cm?
QUESTION 5
There are red and green beads in a bag. When 75 green beads are added, the percentage of red beads decreased from 30% to 20%. How many red beads are there in the bag?
QUESTION 6
Kavita had 50% fewer erasers than Mark. After Mark gave 15 of his erasers to Kavita, Kavita had 40% fewer erasers than Mark. How many erasers did Kavita have at first?
QUESTION 7
The ratio of Ryan’s pocket money to John’s pocket money was 3 : 2. After Ryan saved $15 and John spent $8, the ratio of Ryan’s pocket money to John’s pocket money was 3 : 1. How much money did Ryan have at first?
QUESTION 8
Shop A has 156 kg of rice. Shop B has 72 kg of rice. After both shops sold an equal amount of rice, the ratio of rice that shop A has to shop B is 4:1. Find the amount of rice sold by each shop.
QUESTION 9
6/14 of the chairs in a hall are in rows of 13. Half of the chairs are in rows of 7. There are 112 more chairs in rows of 7. The rest of the chairs are stacked up. Find the total number of chairs.
QUESTION 10
Tank A is filled with water to its brim. Water is then poured from Tank A to Tank B until both share the same height. What is this height?
You can also download the Math Quiz and the Quiz Answers.
Scroll down for the answers.
You are sure you want to see the answers? Have you tried your absolute best? Have you? Really? Okay, okay. Here you go:
QUESTION 1
68 people were invited
QUESTION 2
a) 8:3:9
b) 3024 visitors
QUESTION 3
a) 125.6cm
b) 192.5cm squared
QUESTION 4
a) 12cm
b) 4min 36 sec
QUESTION 5
There are 45 red beads in the bag
QUESTION 6
Kavita had 120 erasers at first
QUESTION 7
Ryan had $39 at first
QUESTION 8
Each shop sold 44 kg of rice.
QUESTION 9
There were a total of 1568 chairs.
QUESTION 10
The height of the water is 25 cm.
So how many correct answers did you manage?
9 responses so far
Its sad to see that MOE educationists are defensive in their reply even though majority of Singaporean parents,students, tutors even teachers find the paper tough.
Knowing how to do is one thing, doing it with speed is another requirement to complete the paper. With so many problem questions and limited time, you know the pressure and the stress this kids go through.
I even hear rumours of kids fainting, not sure if this is during or after the papers. Hope this is just rumours.
Pressuring our kids in this manner and increasing the standard over years to come will only increase matters that is worrying . We will see increased rate in suicide and/or filling up the occupancy in IMH. My daughter just finished PSLE and I am now worried for my son taking PSLE in Year 2015.
Hi, Martin Lee here.
Was on the show with my son, Alfred.
We’ll be sitting down this weekend and take this quiz together, and see how many questions I’ll get correct in 40mins.
Check out more PSLE Questions & Solutions for Maths 2009 on my blog : http://psle-2009-questions.blogspot.com
Have a great weekend.
Technically speaking, these questions are not as “tough” as it seems to be. For a typical P6 children, they should be able to answer at least 5 questions correct.
Question 5,6,7 and 8, students should be able to answer these 4 questions effortlessly. They are basic Before and After problems, by understanding the concept of unchanged quantities.
P6 students are expected to solve problem sums independently. The better they are at solving, the better they score in the examinations.
Hi Martin and Alfred!
Nice to meet you.
hahaha I only got question 3 part b and question 5 wrong. Then again, I am in my final year of schooling so I really should be getting all of it right
… Btw, question 9 isn’t phrased very well. It should probably say ‘There are 112 more chairs in rows of 7 than in rows of 13.’ instead of just ‘There are 112 more chairs in rows of 7.’ so that people are aware that it’s out of the chairs on the floor… just a suggestion.
-Candice
i really think that every P6 student is capable of answering those questions
not only are they taught so in class, these questions are not that much more difficult than those i did for my PSLE in 2005 (the year which had a mistake in the paper)
i think the real problem lies in the phrasing of the questions
even in secondary school, the phrasing of maths questions sometimes makes it hard to comprehend what the examiner is asking for
These questions are not difficult. If the pupils understand the concepts and know how to use models to analyse the problems, they should be able to answer all the questions.
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I can’t believe i got all but 3 questions wrong…. Am i that bad????