Brain Teaser - Question of Age 🤔

Mikev · Apr 6, 2025

Question of Age

A teacher questions his pupil:

I am four times the age you were when I was the age you are now.
I am forty years old, how old are you?'

I will post the answer below later.

Kc1 · Apr 7, 2025

I find it irritating when I see problems like these given to school children, who are then told to solve the problem! The only thing difficult in this “problem” is the language rather than the mathematics!!
Would it still be a problem if the question was put in the form of “ I am 4 times as old as you are and I am 40 years old. How old are you?”
Why do we complicate things for children and make them believe that being able to “problem solve” is a sign of higher intelligence, when in reality, most of these “problems” are nothing more than being able to simplify language?

Abby22 · Apr 7, 2025

Kc1 said:
I find it irritating when I see problems like these given to school children, who are then told to solve the problem! The only thing difficult in this “problem” is the language rather than the mathematics!!
Would it still be a problem if the question was put in the form of “ I am 4 times as old as you are and I am 40 years old. How old are you?”
Why do we complicate things for children and make them believe that being able to “problem solve” is a sign of higher intelligence, when in reality, most of these “problems” are nothing more than being able to simplify language?

Perhaps children also have to learn English language NOT just mathematics ?

Wandiwa · Apr 7, 2025

Very poorly written question. But Im gonna say the student is 10.
Logic: teacher is 4 times the students age now ....
Making the student 10 is years old as the teacher is 4 times his age at 40.
Again terribly written question

Mikev · Apr 13, 2025

The answer is:

The student is 25 years old

Wandiwa · Apr 13, 2025

Mikev said:
The answer is: The student is 25 years old.

OK, now I'd like the answer explained please.

Abby22 · Apr 13, 2025

Wandiwa said:
OK, now I'd like the answer explained please.

The easiest way to approach the problem is to define a variable for every part of the sentence, until you have tiny blocks of sentences that you can easily understand. Yeah this one hurts the head head

x = my age = 40
y = age you had when I had the age you have
x = 4y
40 = 4y
y = 10
10 = age you had when I had the age you have
z = age you have
10 = age you had when I was z
a = difference of age (your age - my age)
10 = z+a
10 = z+(your age - my age)
10 = 2z - my age = 2z - 40
50 = 2z
z = 25 = age you have

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