9-Year-Old’s Math Homework Grading Goes Viral: ‘Still Frustrating’

A frustrated parent has turned to the internet after their 9-year-old son’s math homework was marked incorrect—even though, at least to many readers, his answers appear to be right.

Posted in the subreddit r/mildlyinfuriating, u/dak7 shared an image of the homework with two probability questions from the child’s assignment.

Newsweek reached out to u/dak7 on Reddit for comment. We could not verify details of the case.

The first question asked: “What is the likelihood of each event? (a) Rolling a number greater than 6 on a regular 6-sided number cube?” The 9-year-old answered: “0% chance.”

The second asked: “(b) Flipping a head on a penny?” He wrote: “50%.”

Both answers were marked incorrect.

Instead, the teacher’s corrections read: “On 1a, the likelihood of the event is impossible. On 1b, the likelihood of the event is equally likely.”

The post has gone viral on Reddit, clocking up over 93,000 upvotes and thousands of comments from other users.

Many questioned whether the teacher was being too rigid in expecting students to use the exact phrasing from a lesson rather than acknowledging correct mathematical reasoning.

“These kind of questions that ask for a specific answer, but are open ended always made me furious. Like when taking an exam in college, I encountered this sort of dilemma. Had to email the professor and tell him I was right despite the difference in input,” one user wrote.

Another, who shared that they were a former teacher, was divided and commented that a math test should assess mathematical understanding, not just the ability to follow instructions.

“It is important to test on directions, but this should not result in a student receiving 0 points on a math test that is assessing math understanding if the answers are still mathematically correct,” they wrote.

Others simply said the wording of the question didn’t make sense. “The teacher’s phrasing doesn’t even make sense? ‘The likelihood of the event is impossible’. No, the event is impossible, not the likelihood. And ‘the likelihood of the event is equally likely’? What?” another user questioned.

In a follow-up comment, the original poster even shared an email from their son’s teacher that read: “This was discussed in class in our probability unit. If the question is asking for the likelihood of an event, the possible responses were impossible, unlikely, equally likely, likely, and certain.

“Each of these responses correlated with specific probabilities or a range of probabilities but the probabilities themselves were not stated. [Your son’s] answers stated the probabilities rather than the likelihood.”

Jeannine Olivier, a math tutor at FindTutors, understood the parent’s confusion. “I would argue the child’s thinking is correct—they just needed to use the correct math vocabulary to show their understanding of probability,” she said.

“The teacher is looking for the mathematical response, using the correct vocabulary,” Olivier continued. “Unless you teach math, I guess that is hard to understand.”

Many Reddit users agreed that the questioning didn’t make sense for them, let alone a third or fourth grader.

“As most things in life, there’s more nuance to this than a quick Reddit post allows,” the poster commented. “Sometimes after you learn the nuance it makes sense. In this case, even with the nuance, it’s still frustrating.”