Maths Question Easily Solved By Five-Year-Old’s Baffles Internet

A maths question that pre-school kids can solve has adults completely baffled.

Whether you barely passed Maths or you studied the subject at university, there's a maths question doing the rounds that is stumping every skill level – except pre-schoolers.

The question posted to Reddit had users up in arms as they tried to calculate the answer, only to realise that it's more simple than they first thought.

If anyone remembers Noel Edmond's Are You Smarter Than A Ten Year Old? then this problem would be in the five-year-old age category, because apparently pre-schoolers are having no trouble solving it.

So, are you smarter than a five-year-old?

Try to solve the question above, captioned: "This problem can be solved by pre-school children in five to ten minutes, by programmers in an hour and by people in higher education... well, check it yourself!"

The problem initially looks like a simple code breaker – you work out the value of one number and you quickly get the answer you need.

However, one user did the maths: "Values are as follows- 6,0,9=1 / 1,3,7,2,5=0 / 8=2," only to find out they completely 'wasted' their time after they found out what the answer actually was.

Alamy

So? How do you solve the problem well, as one user articulately put: "Just read the comments and found that it’s literally just how many circles… well.. yeah. Wasted time I won’t get back. Thus meaning 4’s value would be 0 as well…"

Yep. You don't have to solve for one of the values, you literally just have to count the number of circles in those numbers.

So, '8' would be two circles, which makes the last answer two.

To be fair, that's what the user who actually bothered to do the math got, they just used the wrong method.

And they weren't alone, with another user writing: "I got the right answer (2) using the entirely wrong method. I am both impressed and disappointed in myself."

Alamy

While others found the problem pretty simple, adding: "Don't wanna brag. I'm a programmer and it took me only a few seconds to solve."

However, many users were quick to weigh in with why adults might be finding the question so hard to solve, with one user saying: "Yeah, I think the misuse of the equals sign is the biggest reason why it's hard for adults, and not hard for children who are less accustomed to the sign."

Another added: "Yeah because the headline is a premise, we don't question. It's the hint and challenge-request to start the game (hint: "pre-school", so no mathematics). But however: Nice puzzle anyways."

So, are you smarter than a five-year-old? For this problem, we're definitely not.