I think I blew my 800 math SAT on a similar issue, although I don't recall the exact question 50 years later. One of my teachers had good advice: answer the question you think they meant to have asked. Success in the "real world" is correlated with answering the question the way every other "good student" would have answered, and not necessarily correlated with the pedantically "correct" answer. In a similar vein, I've always found it curious that journalists would _poll_ mathematicians about whether some fact is true or not -- e.g., the discussion prior to proving Fermat's Last Theorem. Mathematics, we hope, isn't a matter of opinion or probability, but has an objective truth which is independent of people's hopes, wishes and any other emotions. Of course, any such mathematical statement must be posed in a suitably rigorous form before it can be answered correctly. At 10:22 AM 2/4/2014, Bill Gosper wrote:
I just failed to Google up any outrage over an infuriating TV quiz show I mistakenly watched several years ago. The contestant, (former astronaut Rusty Schweikart?) sailed right through to the million dollar question without even using his two "lifelines(?)", and then was sent home penniless for not listing 1 among the "factors" of 6. I wonder if, had he mentioned 1, they would have screwed him for confusing "factors" with "divisors".
Anyway, ("drill and kill") Saxon Math is apparently using "factor" to mean divisor, presumably because it has fewer syllables:
"Write the factors of 10 that are also factors of 15."
Sounds like they are expecting a "factor" of 1. (I should've checked if they think 1 is a prime.)
In the same assignment,
"Divide 20/9. Write the quotient as a fraction." "Divide and write the quotient as a fraction: 25/6"
It would probably be less harmful if they signaled their intent with gestures and whistles, as in canine obedience school.
--rwg