Real Life Adventures by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich for May 18, 2011

“…in sales, where we just make up numbers.”

3xy=2(xy-2) 3xy=2xy-4 xy=-4 3x(4y)=12xy=12(-4)=-48Math is your friend.

The answer is 42.

Go ask your mother????

I get something different:3XY = 2(XY-2)3XY = 2XY-43X= 2X-4/Y3X4Y=4Y(2X) -4Y(4/Y)3X4Y=8XY-163X4Y=8(XY-2)

42 is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

Math is NOT my friend.

Technically, hippogriff, “42” is not the meaning of life, the universe, and everything per se. It’s the answer to the ultimate QUESTION of life, the universe, and everything…(How does one italicize now? I’ve seen people do it…)

Use standard HTML tags for text formatting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html_tags

Thanks, tedcoop. I’d tried using brackets rather than arrows ([i], [/i]), which didn’t work, but I was on the right track.

(And yes, math and I have never been exactly on a FRIENDLY footing, but given time I could have wrestled the above into submission…)

The Problem is, the answer’s worng!

I’m convinced “42” is the right answer. It’s the question that’s…questionable.

This was on my young friend’s PSAT: 3y = x and w = 3; solve wy – x.

Math is your friend when you only have * one variable* to solve for.

Yes, but this problem doesn’t ask you to solve for any variable, just find the value of 3x(4y), and it is indeed -48.

Never mind how easy it is to find the answer, the problem does not look like anything I’ve ever seen in any school curriculum. The joke is great, but I would ask the artists in the future to please open a textbook for a more realistic example. Before this goes up on the wall of my math class, I’m gonna have to change the problem.