The Easiest Test

[Endo]

I got 4100, what is it that makes people get 5000?

No one really knows for sure, it is believed to be something to do with how we are taught to add numbers up in columns as children. The presentation is key and having to add them up out-loud quickly, somewhere in that mental process we turn the last 1010 into 1100, which changes how we remember the 3090 we are carrying in our memory to 3900 and somewhere along the line we end up with 5000.

But not everyone gets it wrong. It's not a mathematics issue, even math degree students get it wrong, it's something to do with how we manipulate numbers in our head.

MM

I think it's more along the lines of combination errors. I got to 3090, then my brain started doing stuff on its own, 3+1 = 4K, but we've got another K from 90+10, instead of the proper 100, so that made it 5K.

[Alex K]

Same here, I was correct up till 3090, and then brain messed up and carried the 1 from 90+10 one digit too far and completed it to a 1000 instead of a 100, as if it forgot that there was another decimal place hiding in the middle.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I got 11 3/4. Did it twice, got the same answer.

I always was bollocks at maths.

Boru

[Alex K]

I got 11 3/4. Did it twice, got the same answer.

I always was bollocks at maths.

Boru

Don't feel bad, once you're wrong, it don't matter much whether you got 5000, 11 3/4 or -13

[Chad32]

That's the thing about math. You're either correct, or you aren't. There's no in between.

[Whateverist]

Beg to differ. I think how and why we go wrong can be more or less interesting.

I ignored the directions of adding them from L to R and T to B, realizing the order is entirely flexible when only addition is in play. Basically the same way Shaman did it.