40% of College Students get this question wrong. AND IT MAKES ME ANGRY!

[Splyth]

Oh come on It's just First Outer Inner Last

 

[GiantRedButton]

even if you can't do that by hand, thats what the binomic formulea are for.
You won't survive the 5 years before a levels if you can't solve that.
So when your around 13 yiou realyy should know that in germany.
But our math education demandfs way to much and is more than most people will ever use.
So its kinda out of the regular.

 

[Vohn_exel]

College is supposed to be a place of higher learning. To get into college you must also pass high school and a number of exams. Yet, based on a recent campus wide survey conducted at my school 40% of college students cannot FOIL. I am a math major and this saddens and angers me. So Escapist, I ask you:

FOIL: (x+3)^2
EDIT: FOIL also means Expand...

Please put your answers in spoiler tags so people can't cheat without actively looking. To do a spoiler tag you place [mathspoiler]{content}[/mathspoiler] but remove the "math" part.

Remember, 40 freakin' percent fail at this. Try not to be one of them.

The correct answer is

Spoiler

{x^2+6x+9}

I have a learning disability that prevents me from doing higher then 8th grade math, but I never could quite grasp the concept of FOIL. I know what it stands for, but that doesn't mean I can do the problem. Most of my problem with math is, infact, that I don't understand what I think I understand...and then I have to painstakingly go back and find out where I went wrong. I HATE math.

 

[RejectWoW]

I'm assuming those who got it wrong are mostly art students where as this is a math question.

Hey, I took art, then went to college for two years in architecture, then switched and going 3 years in psychology. In no way has my education focused on maths... And I got it right.

...Ok, to be entirely fair, for some masochistic tendency I actually took "full" maths till the 12th grade... Why? Beats me. I hated the bloody thing... But I did...

@OP: It gets scarier... Check out how many English speaking high school and college students can't tell you the difference between "your" and "you're"; or "their", "there" and "they're"; or "it's" and "its"... etc. Yes, most people can't tell a contraction from a possessive...

I understand completely, I am an excellent writer and I always correct my friends when they say "Jane and me"...

Well, did you correct them just for fun or because you wanted to point out that they were wrong?

I want to make them speak English properly. How are we supposed to be an intelligent civilization if we fail to speak our own language properly. Though my constant correcting some of them have stopped doing it, and some have even begun to correct others. Think of it as a "Pay it forward" scenario for English. =)

Okay, glad to hear it started to catch on then. But proper English is an evolutionary term. Todays English is very different from the kind that was spoken a hundred years ago. So if its not blatantly wrong grammar (like "I haz chesscakes") I dont really mind when people say "Jane and me" for example. Its just evolution.

 

[ninjapenguin981]

Spoiler

x^2 + 6x + 9

Simple algebra omg.

EDIT:
And for those who are interested/can't find out what x actually equals:

Spoiler

x^2 + 6x + 9 = 0
(x+3)(x+3) = 0
x = -3 repeated root.

 

[Stevepinto3]

Not too surprised really. 60% of college students knowing how to do that is probably a good number.

If you want to get REALLY scared, look up how many Americans can't find Iraq on a map of the middle east. The same people that will support a full scale invasion of the country don't even know where it is.

 

[slopeslider]

100% of college students interviewed got this question wrong:
'What is heavier, a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks?'
I asked 2 people, they both got it wrong, my survey is technically right.
Of course if they did this survey at a Cali art school they'd get different answers than at a science school. Also interviewing 20 people or so won't cut it, as my survey shows you need a good number of people.

Also, I got the foil right.

 

[GrinningManiac]

I hate maths, but I think I know this

Spoiler: no, no I do not in any way. This is shameful

6x?

I always hated pure maths. I never saw the point of working out something when the answer didn't affect anything. Physics was good, because I could amount the answer to some sort of worth, but pure, unnapplied sums were just pointless and aggravating. Particularly the methods we HAD to learn that were harder than the one we learnt yesterday that gives the same result

 

[AvsJoe]

Spoiler: Answer. I think.

(x+3)(x+3)

= x[sup]2[/sup]+3x+3x+9

= x[sup]2[/sup]+6x+9

I think that's correct. It should be; I'm not that far removed from high school math courses.

Note: I have not and will not peek at the answer so someone please quote me and tell me if I got it right or wrong.

 

[Dahni]

Spoiler

(x+3)^2
= (x+3)(x+3)
= x^2 + 3x + 3x + 9
= x^2 + 6x + 9

easy stuff.
i learned this in 1st year.

 

[The Heik]

College is supposed to be a place of higher learning. To get into college you must also pass high school and a number of exams. Yet, based on a recent campus wide survey conducted at my school 40% of college students cannot FOIL. I am a math major and this saddens and angers me. So Escapist, I ask you:

FOIL: (x+3)^2
EDIT: FOIL also means Expand...

Please put your answers in spoiler tags so people can't cheat without actively looking. To do a spoiler tag you place [mathspoiler]{content}[/mathspoiler] but remove the "math" part.

Remember, 40 freakin' percent fail at this. Try not to be one of them.

The correct answer is

Spoiler

{x^2+6x+9}

Spoiler

(x+3)^2 = (x+3)(x+3)

F = x*x = x^2

O = x*3 = 3x

I = x*3 = 3x

L = 3*3 = 9

FOIL'd = (x^2+3x+3x+9) = (x^2+6x+9)

There you go, the answer in the scientific manner.

 

[Hyrulian Hero]

yeah, college students not getting this is pretty pathetic. no one has an excuse not to really because it is taught (including the acronym FOIL) in early high school algebra. So if you have a high school diploma, you should know this answer.

 

[Weaver]

FOIL is retarded.
Just learn how to expand properly.

 

[madmatt]

the fact that people choose to do maths when they could be free makes ME angry
but then i got it wrong so i guess i am prejudiced...

 

[SirDerick]

I've studied algebra in three different places and not once have I heard "FOIL" being used.

 

[Leftnt Sharpe]

Aaaaahhhhh numbers *runs and hides behind his mountain of history books*.

 

[Chipperz]

yeah, college students not getting this is pretty pathetic. no one has an excuse not to really because it is taught (including the acronym FOIL) in early high school algebra. So if you have a high school diploma, you should know this answer.

I was never taught anything about a foil, except in cooking.

I know SOHCAHTOA, though. Fuck knows what it means though. I think it's about finding a triangle on a hippopotamus, though.

 

[Little Duck]

Piss easy. But mind you, I did do A level maths, so if I got it wrong it would have been embarassing.

Alot of people aren't exposed to that kind of paths though so don't know what to do with it.