Subject:
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Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Thu, 12 Apr 2001 03:45:10 GMT
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Viewed:
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58 times
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My son came home with a homework assignment today that I think is a bit tough.
Here it is
If you assign the letters of the alphabet numeric values with 1 == a and 26
== z, find a word starting with each letter that sums to exactly 100. Or at
least find 5 different ones anyway, the assignment sheet isn't totally clear.
For example the value of "alphabet" is 1, 12, 16, 8, 1, 2, 5, 20 or 65
and the value of "argument" is 99
I set up a spreadsheet that aids in calculating these but it took me an hour
to find 2 with that aid. 4 words have been apparently circulating around the
schoolyard: turkey, pumpkin, keyboard, wednesday and we found the additional
ones mourns and acquitted.
I suspect the most effective way to solve this is brute force, write some
perl or C++ or whatever to calculate the values for words from a
dictionary... is that something a third grader should be able to do? He may
have had this for a few days already but even if handed out on Monday, I
think this is a lot of work to be due Thursday of the same week.
What do you guys think? Is this too hard for a third grader? (Nik doesn't
know perl...)
(If you think this veers off into the philosophy of schooling feel free to
FUT to .debate but right now I'm just interested in an evaluation of difficulty)
Please note that I am not asking anyone to contribute words, I don't believe
in using the internet to get homework done... besides he (sort of) has his 5
already.
++Lar
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Message has 5 Replies:
 | | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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| (...) Look for patterns or workarounds. Whenever something comes along that, like this, appears way too hard to be reasonable, I just assume it's a trick question. Which way the smoke blows depends on where the survivors were buried.(1) (...) (24 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
| | | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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| (...) It certainly takes a lot of trial and error to come up with a word which sums to 100 exactly. So to find one word at 100 starting with each letter from the alphabet could easily take a few days if you're not using any computer tools. The (...) (24 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
| | | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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| (...) Hm. Figuring the average letter is worth 13.5 points, this means that most words are going to be in the 7-8 letter range. That's probably reasonable for a third grader. I suppose it's a way to get in a heck of a lot of boring arithmetic (...) (24 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
| | | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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| My son had a similiar assignment (2nd or third grade - he's in fourth now), but it wasn't *exactly* 100. I don't remember the exact parameters of the assignment, but it wasn't something frustratingly difficult - finding exact 100 pt. words is going (...) (24 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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