Questionable Answers Try the Patience of Testy Readers

I have received mixed reviews of my answers to several of the new kind of questions that are to replace the old multiple-choice questions in the testing of California students.

Some readers thought my answers brilliant; some thought them absurd.

My point, of course, was to suggest that the questions themselves were absurd. For example, one question asked how many hot dogs had no relish or ketchup if a family of six ordered 13--9 with mustard, 3 with ketchup, 8 with relish, 4 with mustard and relish, and 3 with mustard, ketchup and relish.

(My answer was that the counterman would tell that family to get their own condiments.)

Arthur Hopmans of Pasadena works it out with symbols: “k 3 ketchup; m 9 mustard; r 8 relish; mr 4 mustard and relish; mrk 3 mustard, relish and ketchup. The total (27) for example infers that the five classes: k/ m/ r/ mr/ mrk, are not mutually exclusive. Examples: the 3 k are also mrk and therefore irrelevant. The 3 mrk are also mr and therefore irrelevant. The 4 mr are also r and therefore irrelevant. This leaves us with 13 hot dogs, 8 of which have relish or relish and ketchup. Since 13 minus 8 equals 5, there are 5 hot dogs with no relish or ketchup Q.E.D.”

That sounds like so much mustard to me. Q.E.D.

Marilyn Almeida of Santa Monica writes that she found a similar question in Norton Juster’s book “The Phantom Tollbooth,” which she calls a “kind of 20th-Century ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ ”

The question is this: “There’s nothing to it. If a small car carrying three people at 30 miles an hour for 10 minutes along a road five miles long at 11:35 in the morning starts at the same time as three people who have been traveling in a little automobile at 20 miles an hour for 15 minutes on another road exactly twice as long as one-half the distance of the other, while a dog, a bug, and a boy travel an equal distance in the same time or the same distance in an equal time along a third road in mid-October, then which one arrives first and which is the best way to go?”

The answer, of course, is the boy in the Volkswagen, and the best way to go is thataway.

Ray W. Anderson of Palos Verdes Estates notes that thought-requiring questions are not a new thing in American education. He quotes an article in the Wall Street Journal on a test given to prospective high school students in New Jersey in 1885.

The journal pointed out that today’s American high school students rank far below those of other industrialized countries. For example, more than 40% of 17-year-old juniors were unable to place World War II as “somewhere between 1900 and 1950.” (Bet they could quote the dialogue from “Batman.”)

The questions in the 1885 test are improbably difficult. For example, in algebra: “Define algebra, an algebraic expression, a polynomial. Make a literal trinomial. Write a homogeneous quadrinomial of the third degree. Express the cube root of 10ax in two ways. “

That makes programming my VCR look easy.

Here’s one in simple arithmetic: “A merchant sold a quantity of goods for $18,775. He deducts 5% for cash and then finds that he has made 10%. What did he pay for the goods?”

Are they kidding? He undoubtedly got the goods wholesale, so the question is irrelevant.

I thought grammar would be easy. I was pretty good at grammar, even in the eighth grade:

Question: “Correct (a) It is only me; (b) Who did she invite? (c) Whenever my husband or son take an umbrella downtown, they always leave it.”

OK. That was easy. “It is only I. Whom did she invite? Whenever my husband or son takes an umbrella downtown, he always leaves it.”

But of course nobody talks that way.

Another requires more creativity: “Write four lines of poetry, giving particular attention to the use of capitals, and to punctuation.” OK. Here goes:

The boy stood on the burning deck;

His feet were hot as fire;

He said, “Take pity, God!

“I’m Jack McGee, Esq.”

The arithmetic test was something else. Question: “Divide the difference between 37 hundredths and 95 thousandths by 25 hundred thousands and express the result in words.”

Words fail me. And don’t forget that in 1885 they didn’t have electric calculators.

Kaaren Page, a math teacher at Arvin High School, in Kern County, illuminates part of the problem with the answers her students gave to the question, “The Philadelphia Phillies play games in Veteran’s Stadium, located in which state?”

The answers: Pinavianze, Pensolvania, Pennsylvannia, Phensilbane, Pensalvina, Pennsilvena, Pesilbania, Pensolmola, Pinsilbenia, Pensavenila, Panncilvena, Pennelyvin, Pensylvania and Pensillvania.

So much for the birthplace of our nation.