Tricky(?) Crocodile Maths Exam Question

[Dieter]

(10-10-2015 03:25 AM)Gerson W. Barbosa Wrote:  Wasn't this meant for high-school students, many of those who hate math? I did it by hand in a few minutes, but I learned the technique in 1982, only when I was a Physics student.

Physics? University ?-)

All it takes here is deriving a simple equation by applying the chain rule. That's something I learned back in school when I was 17. Today in many European countries students leave school at 17 or 18 (one year earlier than in the Eighties), and at this point their math skills should be sufficient for much more complex tasks than this more or less trivial crocodile problem which, as you said, can be solved in a few minutes. Even with paper and pencil. Let alone with a graphing calculator (enter equation, determine minimum) where the required time essentially depends on how fast you can type. ;-)

Dieter