Thanks for the references; I hadn't heard about the Time and Newsweek coverage. Regards, Nick Fred W. Helenius wrote:
Nick Baxter wrote:
Can someone please fill in the details of a story I heard about a high school student who correctly protested the solution to the following problem that appear on a standardized test some years ago.
Problem: Given an equilateral pyramid (square base), glue two regular tetrahedrons (same edge length) to two non-adjacent triangular faces. How many faces does the resulting polyhedron have?
I'm looking for the name (and any other information) of the student, the year, the test, the given (incorrect) answer, and the original wording of the problem, if possible. Any references to published accounts of the incident are also appreciated.
The two web pages I've found both have it as an equilateral square pyramid and just one regular tetrahedron, making the intended answer 5 + 4 - 2 = 7 instead of the correct 5.
http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/~sillke/PUZZLES/tetrahedron-octahedro... gives three references:
Mathematics Magazine, 54:3 (May 1981), p.152, Time, 31 March 1981, p.51, and Newsweek, 6 April 1981, p.84.
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~klinger/query1.html says the problem appeared in the 1980 PSAT and refers to the book _Learning Mathematics_ (1984) by Robert B. Davis.
If I were checking these references at the library, I'd also try looking up PSAT and ETS in the 1980 and 1981 New York Times Indexes.