Saturday 26 February 2011

Token problem

Here's a little mathematical problem for Key Stage 2 children:

Two children, Mike and Nina, are collecting tokens for a free gift from a store. They both have some tokens, but Mike needs 49 more and Nina needs 2 more to get the gift. They decide to put their tokens together, but they still do not have enough to get the gift. How many tokens did they each have?

The arithmetic involved in this is really simple, yet many children in Key Stage 2 (and some adults!) struggle to organise the information given here.

How did you do? Answer and commentary in my next post.

1 comment:

  1. Hi there, your problem has definitely been puzzling me. However I seem to know the answer however I'm not entirely sure how I got to it.

    I think that Mike has 1 token, and Nina has 48, meaning that the quantities needed would be correct (e.g. 1+49 = 48+2). Meaning that when 1 +48 are put together it only makes 49 instead of the target 50.

    I'm not sure whether this has anything to do with the difference between the two numbers has to be 47. But I've tried other quantities and they did work, however in this case they are not meant to.

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