Media outlets around the world went crazy over a 5th grade math exam question in China. But they all missed the real story! The problem actually dates back to French researchers in 1979. In this video I present the real story to the viral "Chinese" captain's age question.

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Update thanks to comment from Markus Schüt: the origin dates back to 1841 in a letter Flaubert wrote! See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_captain

My blog post for this video:
https://wp.me/p6aMk-5rE

Captain's age question
"If a ship had 26 sheep and 10 goats onboard, how old is the ship's captain?"

South China Morning Post
http://www.scmp.com/news/china..../society/article/213

The Portal (Chinese)
http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1971117

RT
https://www.rt.com/news/417231....-china-math-problem-

BBC
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42857864

Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com..../news/worldviews/wp/

Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/can-yo....u-solve-it-bizarre-m

Official response (Chinese).
http://news.sina.com.cn/s/wh/2....018-01-27/doc-ifyqzc

Sherlock Holmes' deduction in The Hound of the Baskervilles
https://www.quora.com/What-are....-some-of-the-best-de

Novotná, Jarmila, and Bernard Sarrazy. "Model of a professor’s didactical action in mathematics education: professor’s variability and students’ algorithmic flexibility in solving arithmetical problems." The Fourth Congress of the European Society in Mathematics Education. 2005.
http://www.erme.tu-dortmund.de..../~erme/CERME4/CERME4

de Corte, Eric, Brian Greer, and Lieven Verschaffel, eds. Making Sense of Word Problems. CRC Press, 2000. Pages 3-5.
https://books.google.com/books?id=OOyHRpWsI7sC&lpg=PR7&ots=oRk2XlgRGu&dq=%2226%20sheep%22%20%2210%20goats%22%20boat&lr&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=%2226%20sheep%22%20%2210%20goats%22%20boat&f=false

Reusser, Kurt. "Problem solving beyond the logic of things: Contextual effects on understanding and solving word problems." Instructional Science. 17.4 (1988): 309-338.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED270327.pdf

Benjamin Dickman Twitter and tweet
https://twitter.com/benjamindi....ckman/status/9603040

Benjamin Dickman answer on Math Educators Stack Exchange
https://matheducators.stackexc....hange.com/questions/

Gene Wirchenko blog
http://genew.ca/solving-the-right-problem-right/

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