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mathematics
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Los Angeles High School Math Exam
1. Johnny has an AK47 with a 40 round clip. If he misses 6 out of 10 shots
and shoots 15 times each drive by, how many drive by shootings must he
conduct before he shoots 50 people?
2. Paul has 2 ounces of cocaine and he sells 10 grams to Jackson for $820,
and 2 grams to Billy for $85 per gram. What is the street value of the
balance of the cocaine if he doesn't cut it?
3. Willie gets $200 for stealing a BMW, $50 for a Chevy and $100 for a 4x4.
If he has stolen two BMWs and three 4x4s, how many Chevys will he have to
steal to make $800?
4. If the contents of an average can of spray paint covers 22 square feet
and the average letter is eight square feet, how many letters can a
teenager spray with eight cans of paint?
5. Hector got six girls in his gang pregnant. There are 27 girls in the
gang. What percentage of girls in the gang has Hector knocked up?
6. Kathy gets $125 for sneaking an illegal alien across the border from
Mexico. She sneaked three illegals over the border every night for six days
but then one of them ripped her off for $500. How much money does she have
left?
7. Byron can trade $150 worth of food stamps for two tickets to a Lakers
regular season game. If a play-off game costs 20 percent more, how many
play-off tickets can he get for $500 in food stamps? From:
From: jdmcmine#NoSpam.coop2.b11.ingr.com (Jeff)
Answers to City of Los Angeles High School Math Proficiency Exam
1. Johnny has an AK47 with a 40 round clip. If he misses 6 out of 10 shots
and shoots 15 times each drive by, how many drive by shootings must he
conduct before he shoots 50 people?
Johnny hits 15*(4/10) people per drive by, which means that he
will have to participate in 9 drive bys to shoot 50 people.
However, he will have completed two drive-by shootings and be
just starting the third when he has to reload. Since he only
stole a single clip, he'll only have shot 16 people when the
homeboys with the UZIs' make Swiss cheese out of him.
2. Pony has 2 ounces of cocaine and he sells an 8 ball to Jackson for
$320 and 2 grams to Billy for $85 per gram. What is the street value
of the balance of the cocaine if he doesn't cut it?
At 454 grams per pound, 2oz of the rock = 56.75 grams. An "8
ball" is 8 grams, so pony has sold 10 grams total and has 46.75
grams left. If he keeps selling 8-balls, he can sell 5 more (for
a total of 5*$320=$1,600) and have 6.75 grams for his own nose.
If he sells 2 gram packs, he can sell (46/2-23) packs at $85
apiece = (23*$85)=$1,955. However, he could divide it into small
parts, bake it up into crack and sell the rocks for an even
larger profit. This problem is really more suited for the Gang
Multi-Variable Economics Test.
3. Ron is pimping for 3 girls. If the price is $65 for each trick,
how many tricks will each have to turn so Ron can pay for his $800
per day crack habit.
800/$64=12 tricks plus a dance. Also, Ron should consider making
a deal with Pony from Question #2.
4. Susan wants to cut her 1/2 pound of heroin to make 20% more profit.
How many ounces of cut will she need?
If she sells the cut heroin at the same price per unit volume,
she will need 20% more volume. 20% of 1/2 pound (=8oz) is 1.6oz.
So, Susan will need 1.6oz of cut to add to the 8 oz of heroin to
get 20% more volume. She will want a cut which looks similar to
raw heroin and has approximately the same melting point. Plain
sugar or laundry detergent are suggested. Laundry detergent has
the added benefit of removing the possibility of customer
complaints, but will sharply limit repeat business.
5. Blade gets $200 for stealing a BMW, $50 for a Chevy, and $100 for
a 4x4. If he has already stolen 2BMW's and 3 4x4's, how many Chevy's
will he have to steal to make $800?
Blade has made 2*$200 + 3*$100=$700 dollars from his theft so
far. He needs $100 more, so he needs to steal $100/$50=2 more
Chevy's. However, he will probably want to steal 4 Chevy's so he
can take the extra two and make a really def low-rider.
6. Little Willy is in prison for 6 years for murder. He got $25,000
for the hit. If his common law wife is spending $250 per month, how
much money will be left when he gets out of prison and how many
years will he get for killing the bitch that spent his money?
6 years*12 months/year*$250/month=$18,000. Little Willy will
have $25,000 - $18,000 = $7,000 left when he gets out of prison.
If Little Willy kills her in the USA, he should expect to get 6
years. However, if he takes her down to Mexico and buries her
scrawny, track-marked butt in the desert, he can get off scott
free.
7. If the average can of spray paint covers 22 square feet, and
the average letter is 4 square feet, how many letters can a tagger
spray with 3 cans of paint?
3 cans of paint will cover 3*22=66 square feet. 66/4=16 letters
with a little paint left over to spray in the eyes of the cop
who's comin' after you. Or the tagger could do 15 letters and a
bitchin' skull.
8. Hector knocked up 6 girls in his gang. There are 27 girls in the
gang. What percentage of the girls in the gang has Hector knocked up?
6/27=22% of the girls. However, 2 of them are lying because
they've been sleeping with Pedro, Hector's lieutenant. So, in
actuality, Hector only knocked up 4/27 or 14.8%.
9. Rosie's sole source of income is shoplifting. If she gets 10 cents on
the dollar from her fence, how much merchandise must she shoplift each
week to make $250.
Solve X/10=250 for X, X=$2,500.
10. Mike carjacked a Chevy Camaro for his date Saturday night with his
young 14 year old girlfriend. He was arrested that night while making his
girlfriend in the backseat. How much prison time is he looking for for the
carjacking and for statutory rape, even though the girl looked legal?
Assume no prior convictions in arriving at your answer.
Mike is only 12 so he will serve no time and will be making
his girlfriend in the lot in someone else's car next Saturday.
mathematics
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From: "*G - P*" <G*P#NoSpam.G*P.Com>
SOCIO-MATH PROBLEMS FOR SAN FRANCISCO STUDENTS
1). Zelda and Jane were given a rottweiler at their commitment ceremony. If
their dog needs to be walked two miles a day and they walk at a rate of 1/2
mile per hour, how much time will they spend discussing their relationship
in public?
2). Michael has two abusive stepfathers and an alcoholic mother. If his
self-esteem is reduced by 20% per dysfunctional parent, but Michael feels
3% better for every person he denigrates, how long will it take before he's
ready to go home if 1 person walks by the cafe every 2 minutes?
3). Sanjeev has 7 piercings. If the likelihood of getting cellulitis on a
given day is 10% per piercing, what is the likelihood Sanjeev will need to
renew his erythromycin prescription during the next week?
4). Chad wants to take half a pound of heroin to Orinda and sell it at a
20% profit. If it originally cost him $1,500 in food stamps, how much
should Nicole write the check for?
5). The City and County of San Francisco decide to destroy 50 rats
infesting downtown. If 9,800 animal rights activists hold a candlelight
vigil, how many people did each dead rat empower?
6). A red sock, a yellow sock, a blue sock, and a white sock are tossed
randomly in a drawer. What is the likelihood that the first two socks drawn
will be socks of color?
7). George weighs 245 pounds and drinks two triple lattes every morning. If
each shot of espresso contains 490mg of caffeine, what is George's average
caffeine density in mg/pound?
8). There are 4500 homes in Mill Valley and all of them recycle plastic. If
each household recycles 10 soda bottles a day and buys one polar fleece
pullover per month, does Mill Valley have a monthly plastic surplus or
deficit? Bonus question: Assuming all the plastic bottles are 1 liter size,
how much Evian are they drinking?
9). If the average person can eat one pork pot sticker in 30 seconds, and
the waitress brings a platter of 12 pot stickers, how long will it take
five vegans to not eat them?
10). Todd begins walking down Market Street with 12 $1 bills in his wallet.
If he always gives panhandlers a single buck, how many legs did he have to
step over if he has $3 left when he reaches the other end and met only one
double-amputee?
Advanced Placement Students Only
11) Katie, Trip, Ling, John-John and Effie share a three-bedroom apartment
on Guerrero for $2400 a month. Effie and Trip can share one bedroom, but
the other three need their own rooms with separate ISDN lines to run their
web servers. None of them wants to use the futon in the living room as a
bed, and they each want to save $650 in three months to attend Burning
Man. What is their best option?
a) All five roommates accept a $12/hour job-share as handgun monitors at
Mission High.
b) Ask Miles, the bisexual auto mechanic, to share Effie and Trip's bedroom
for $500/month.
c) Petition the Board of Supervisors to advance Ling her annual
digital-artists-of-color stipend.
d) Rent strike.
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From: david.springthorpe#NoSpam.REMOVEidx.com.au (David Springthorpe)
Something to offend nearly every ethnic group :
BANKSTOWN HIGH SCHOOL
CITY OF BANKSTOWN
MATHEMATICS EXAM
NAME ............................
GANG ............................
Time allowed 1 hour
If Mohamed lowers his WRX 2 inches front and back and puts on stolen
18-inch Zepter wheels, how many inches has he originally lost from the
stock suspension?
If Con needs 3 razors a day to stay clean shaved, how many razors will he
need before he goes to the gym at 8.00pm?
If Mustaffa runs 10 km from the Police in Lakemba to Punchbowl then steals
a car and drives another 5 km to Bankstown, how many kilometres has he
travelled if he ends up hiding in Wiley Park?
Omar has 2 ounces of cocaine and he sells an "8 ball" to Hamil for $320.00
and 2 grams to Akhmed for $85.00 per gram, what is the street value of the
balance of the cocaine if he doesn't cut it?
If Ahmed receives $200.00 per week disability allowance from Centrelink and
works for his brother as a builder and receives a further $400.00 per week
and then pays $10.00 per week for each of his 11 children for school, how
much money does he have left to buy a smashed Tarago from the auctions?
If the average spray can covers 22 square metres and the average letter is
8 square centimetres, how many letters can a tagger spray with 3 cans of
paint?
If Soula needs 25 mls of wax per day to get rid of her facial hair and
Soula is only 19 years old, how many mls will her mother need if she is 47?
Mohamed has an AK-47 with 2 x 30 round clips. If he misses 6 out of 10
shots and shoots 13 times at each drive-by shooting, how many drive-by
shootings can he attend before he has to reload?
If Jim changes the oil in his Fish & Chips shop deep fryer every 18 months
and this costs him $400.00, how often should he change the oil if he wants
to spend only $180.00 per annum on new oil?
If Abdo runs a Donor Kebab shop and works as a Taxi driver on weekends and
earns $1,200.00 per week, how much does Centrelink give him for his job
search allowance?
If Bankstown's ethnic community is increasing at a rate of 3.5% per month,
the overall population increasing at 2.1 % per month, at what rate are the
Aussies leaving?
Nabil wants to cut his 8 ounces of heroin to make a 20% profit, how many
ounces of cut will he need?
Chang gets $200.00 for stealing a BMW, $150.00 for a Commodore and $100.00
for a Falcon. If he has stolen two BMW's and three Falcons, how many
Commodores will he have to steal to make $1,800.00?
If Bilal gets a haircut and gets a number 2 on the sides and a number 3 on
top, then goes back 3 weeks later and gets a number 1 all round, how much
has his hair grown in 3 weeks? (Assume that his hair grows evenly at a rate
of 2 mm per day)
Quang is pimping for three girls. If the price is $75.00 for the trick, how
many tricks will each girl have to turn so that Quang can pay for his $200
per day crack habit?
If Greg Smith hears the word "yullah" approximately 55 times per hour in
Bankstown Square, How many times will he hear the word "mate" in Penrith
Plaza, if Bankstown has a population of 85,000 and Penrith has a population
of 10,000?
If Luigi drives his family and cousins all in one car from Leichardt to
Stanmore, how many round trips will he need to make if 40 of his relatives
need a lift and he can put 12 people in his Valiant at any one given time?
If Ahmed uses 1 kg of "bog" to fix his smashed car, how many cans of spray
paint will he need if Hardware House is selling them for $9.00 each and
each can has 85 mls and the ambient air temperature averages at 22.5
degrees Celsius?
Trinh is in prison for 6 years for murder. He received $10,00.00 for the
hit. His common law wife is spending $100.00 per month. How much money
will be left when he gets out of prison and how many years will he get for
killing the bitch that spent his money?
If Mario's dad has his top 3 buttons of his shirt open and reveals 1 x
golden cross and 2 other golden ornaments, and has approximately 17 sq cm
of hair coming from his chest with an average length of 2 cm, what is the
probability that the ornaments will be visible from:
2 feet away .....%
5 feet away .....%
100 feet away .....%
If Effie's mum sells her galaktoboureko for $2.00 per slice and she wants
to make an extra 10% profit on each slice, how many sheets of filo pastry
will she leave out if the filo pastry costs 62 c a sheet and she normally
uses 17 sheets on each tray which she cuts into 16 slices?
Hamul has knocked up 6 girls in his gang. There are 27 girls in the gang.
What percentage of the girls in the gang has Hamul knocked up?
If George has $12,000.00 and buys 2 smashed cars from the auctions, how
much will it cost him to fix them if his friend from school Ahmed is a
panel beater and charges him Habib rates of $40.00 per hour?
If Layla has to move her eyes 50 degrees to the right when doing her maths
HSC exam to see Julie Wilson's answers, how many degrees will she have to
move her head if Michelle, Linda and Lisa are sitting 1 metre apart from
Julie?
D.S.
mathematics
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From: Kurt Jaeger <jaegerk#NoSpam.cae.wisc.edu>
One of my undergrad professors was asked what kind of of problems would be on the final. His answer: "Just study the old tests. The problems will be be the same, just the numbers will be different. But not all the numbers will be different. Pi will be the same. Planck's constant will be the same... "
Another professor, when asked how many problems there would be on the final, turned to the student and replied, "I think you will have lots of problems on the final."
mathematics
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From: Peter Taylor <P.A.Taylor#NoSpam.open.ac.uk> This isn't really a joke, it supposedly happened in a UK GCSE exam some years ago, but it may amuse you: question: how many times can you subtract 7 from 83, and what is left afterwards? answer: I can subtract it as many times as I want, and it leaves 76 every time.
mathematics
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From: Jonathan W. Hoyle <jhoyle1#NoSpam.rochester.rr.com> I don't know of that one. But when I was an undergrad, one of my professors told me that when he was a student, and he had trouble with a proof trying to get past step n to step n+1, he would always start with "Clearly ..." Although, he said, he'd get a few points off for "needing more detail at this step", his professor thought that he knew what he had to do, so he'd largely get away with it. He also informed us that because he knew the trick, he was not likely to be fooled if we tried to pull that stunt. :-)
mathematics
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From: William L. Bahn <bahn#NoSpam.bfe.com> I think the one you might be referring to shows a proof that starts at the beginning and goes partway. It then picks up again and proceeds to the end. In the middle between the two parts is a something like, => Then a miracle occurs => The professor, looking at the proof, comments, "You need to be a little more explicit here in step two." Once, when I was grading an exam, I got a paper that had the right answer to four sig figs. But the problem had been set up incorrectly from the very first line. I was therefore all geared up to ream this student a new one for cheating - or for the very least for employing "magical methods" which is quite common when the answers to a problem are in the back of the book. As I worked through this student's work, it turned out that they had made three separate errors - they had set the problem up completely wrong. They had taken a quantity from one side of the equation to the other and didn't flip the sign and they had added to fractions over different denominators by simply adding the denominators. The last two math blunders are common mistakes (and I firmly believe that the level of skill necessary to walk the correct answer back to the initial work and tie it in through the use of these devices was way beyond this student's reach). But, it turned out that that the combination of the three unrelated errors just happen to yield the right answer to four sig figs. While I found this very intriguing and interesting, I graded the problem just as though the answer had only been close. But I did layout this peculiar coincidence to the entire class. I was surprised by the number of students that truly felt that the guy should have received full credit for the problem since, "Why should it matter HOW the answer is arrived at, as long as it's correct." BTW: The guy whose paper it was agreed that the answer deserved no more credit than any incorrect result. The guy that was the most vocal about how unfair this was wouldn't let it go, so I asked him, "Let's say you went to a doctor with a certain ailment and he gave you a prescription and you took it and got better. You then found out that he had misdiagnosed your ailment completely. He looked up the treatment in the Physician's Desk Reference, but read the wrong line from the index and so turned to yet another ailment in the book. When writing the prescription he then transposed some numbers in the dosage. The end result, purely by coincidence, it that you got a prescription for the right medicine in the right dosage and everything worked. Would you be eager to give that doctor full credit and go back to him again? Or would you say, "I'm sure happy that you got lucky, but your license to practice should be yanked immediately."
mathematics
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From: Daniel Giaimo <dgiaimo#NoSpam.nospam.ix.netcom.com>
Another version I've heard is that when the student gets the paper back he
sees a -1 on that problem which has been crossed out. A note on the back
explains that the grader at first didn't think that this step was obvious, but
after thinking about it for an hour, decided that it was.
mathematics
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From: Hauke Reddmann One student was stuck and wrote: The proof of this is left as an exercise for the reader. The prof wrote: Did it, fell for a non sequitur and made a minor calculation error. You get a B+.
mathematics
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EXAM HOWLERS
From: Wade Ramey <wrameyxiii#NoSpam.home.remove13.com>
Problem: Find the limit of [sin(7x)]/(5x) as x -> 0.
Actual answer from actual student: [sin(70)]/(50).
From: Dave L. Renfro <renfrod#NoSpam.central.edu>
Once, in a "math appreciation" course, part of a test I gave
had some one-variable linear equations to solve. Most of this
course was "algebra-free" since many of the students had very
weak backgrounds in math. However, solving one-variable linear
equations was one of the topics covered and this test was
given after that topic had been covered.
Question -- Solve for x: 3x - 2 = x.
Student asks during test -- "I can solve for x on the left side,
but what do I do with the x on the right side?"
From: "denis-feldmann" <denis-feldmann#NoSpam.wanadoo.fr>
Similar one: "Let S =1+1/4+1/16+...+1/4^n; calculate 4S and deduce the value
of S "(this was written on the blackboard)
Later, I heard a voice in the back of the room muttering to herself 'Mmm,
ok, I have calculated forty-five; what do I do now"?
It took me a few minutes to understand :-)
From: Brandon Hombs <hombs#NoSpam.ecn.purdue.edu>
As a freshmem in college some of my friends had to take a trigonometry
refresher course before they could proceed to calculus. On one of the
exams the students were asked what sin(x)/cos(x) equaled. Obviously the
professor expected, tan(x). However, one student put:
sin(x)/cos(x) =3D in/co
How do you respond to an answer like that?!?
From: kovarik#NoSpam.mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA (Zdislav V. Kovarik)
My favorite variation:
sin x
----- = six
n
In a first year linear algebra course for "applied" programs, one of the
questions (on linear combinations) was to determine the ratio of mixing two
solutions of sulphuric acid to obtain an intermediate concentration. One
student protested that this was a chemistry question, and his program was
economics.
From: hutching#NoSpam.cartan.Stanford.EDU (Michael Hutchings)
Once I saw the following. A student was asked to prove that sets A and B
are disjoint. The student first proved that A is disjoint, then proved
that B is disjoint, then concluded that A and B are disjoint.
From: landsbur#NoSpam.troi.cc.rochester.edu (Steven E. Landsburg)
I asked "Is there a smallest positive real number. Why or why not?"
A student wrote: "There is no smallest positive real number, because
if you thought you had found the smallest positive real number, you
could divide it in half a get a smaller one."
Full credit. But he went on:
"Then you can take the result of that calculation, divide it in half
and get still a smaller one. Then you can divide in half again to get
something still smaller. Then you can do it again. This process
generates a sequence that goes on forever. It is infantile."
From: Kristin Hein <kristinhein#NoSpam.home.com>
This isn't as great but one of the students in my first year calculus
labs answer the following on the quiz:
Q:"find the limit as x approaches 3 of 6+3pi"
A: 6+3(3) =12
they substituted 3 in for pi, not knowing it was a constant.
From: Kristin Hein <kristinhein#NoSpam.home.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 22:04:34 GMT
This isn't as great but one of the students in my first year calculus
labs answer the following on the quiz:
Q:"find the limit as x approaches 3 of 6+3pi"
A: 6+3(3) =12
they substituted 3 in for pi, not knowing it was a constant.
mathematics
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From: Dan Styer <Daniel.Styer#NoSpam.oberlin.edu> The following was the last question on a take-home exam presented by Professor Fred Solomon in an applied mathematics course at Swarthmore College in about 1975: Compare Virgil's use of hyperbole in the Aeneid with Cauchy's use of hyperbola in complex variable theory. In particular, how do both authors use an elliptic reference as the sine of a potential event?
mathematics
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From: "William Heierman" <wheierman#NoSpam.corunduminium.com> It is a whimsical story about my alter ego and how he got his "A" in Calculus by convincing his instructor that he had found a remarkable new integration principle: the integral of a product is the product of the integrals. As a teacher of calculus, I found this approach often used by students at sea when it came to such antiderivatives; and I wondered if it could ever produce a correct result. Surprisingly, it could; and I was able to find both general existence properties and fruitful constructive methods. Some of the results and outlines of proof can be found in my string, "Integrals of Products are Products of Integrals" in the "news:sci.math" Discussion Group of the "Mathforum" site. Beginning with the professor duly skeptical, Bill uses examples to parry every attempt by the professor to poke holes in his assertion; until finally the professor himself is convinced it is indeed true! Because the text is symbolically complex (some of the functions are quite tedious), I refuse to type the examples; but I can send you a photocopy of my manuscript if you are interested and will tell me your regular mail address (in The Netherlands?). Most of my colleagues who have seen it think it is pretty funny. It is also entertaining to work out the examples using the "legitimate" methods of calculus (and not avoiding the issue by differentiating the right hand sides)! I would have a second person check the results (just in case I wrote an error) before publication, however.
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