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[–] 218 points 2 years ago* (21 children)

What a deviously misleading diagram.

The triangle on the left isn't actually a right angle triangle, as the other angles add to 100°, meaning the final one is actually 80°, not 90°.

Therefore the triangle on the right also isn't a right angle triangle. That corner is 100°.

100+35=135°. 180-135=45°. So that's 45° for the top angle.

X = the straight line of the joined triangles (180°) - the top angle of the right triangle (45°). 180-45=135°

X is 135°, not the 125° it initially appears to be.

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  • [–] 69 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    It also doesn't say that the line on the bottom is straight, so we have no idea if that middle vertex adds up to 180 degrees. I would say it is unsolvable.

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  • [–] 26 points 2 years ago

    I used to have teacher who deliberately made disproportionate diagrams. His reasoning was that people trust too much what their eyes see and not enough what the numbers tell them. He would've loved that diagram.

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    [–] 64 points 2 years ago (39 children)

    All these people saying its 135 are making big assumptions that I think is incorrect. There’s one triangle (the left one) that has the angles 40, 60, 80. The 80 degrees is calculated based on the other angles. What's very important is the fact that these triangles appear to have a shared 90 degree corner, but that is not the case based on what we just calculated. This means the image is not to scale and we must not make any visual assumptions. So that means we can’t figure out the angles of the right triangle since we only have information of 1 angle (the other can’t be figured out since we can’t assume its actually aligned at the bottom since the graph is now obviously not to scale).

    Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

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  • [–] 56 points 2 years ago (18 children)

    135 is correct. Bottom intersection is 80/100, 180-35-100 = 45 for the top of the second triangle. 180 - 45 = 135

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (13 children)

    You're making the assumption that the straight line consisting of the bottom edge of both triangles is made of supplementary angles. This is not defined due to the nature of the image not being to scale.

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago

    This is a standard way to draw geometric proofs, it's not at all unreasonable to assume straight lines alongside unrepresentative angles. It's certainly still an assumption, but a conventional one.

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    [–] 49 points 2 years ago (16 children)
  • [–] 67 points 2 years ago* (12 children)

    It pisses me off to no end that what is CLEARLY shown as a 90degree angle is not in fact 90deg, I hate it when they do that.

    Also I will sadly admit this can teach people lessons about verifying the information themselves.

    ^GrumbleGrumbleGrumble....^

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago* (7 children)

    I get you, but it doesn't clearly indicate the angle in the middle at the base as much as it suggestively waggles its eyebrows towards 90⁰, it could just as easily be 89.9999999999999⁰, although upon zooming in, you can see the line does shift one pixel over on its way up. You simply can't trust any of the angles as 90⁰ unless it's got the ∟ symbol (that's the official unicode) or you've measured them yourself, and with that one pixel off-set, it's decidedly not 90⁰. That's why you have to do the math.

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    [–] 46 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    trash diagram too, the 90 degree looking center angle is actually 80 on the left, 100 on the right.

    180 - (100 + 35) = y

    x = 180 -y

    I can't be assed to do the simple math

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    trash diagram too

    A lot of those standardized tests like SAT or GRE like to put those in (or at least they used to) on purpose. It wasn't that they couldn't render the diagrams correctly, instead they were checking for people making assumptions with information that wasn't given. To be somewhat fair I seem to recall a disclaimer that they weren't necessarily drawn accurately.

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    [–] 17 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I like that all the comments are people discussing the diagram.

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    [+] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)
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    [–] 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Right one does not depend on the left one. 3rd dimension for the win!

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    [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    C'man there's totally a 1px shift on the line. You can't just assume it's a right angle.

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    [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The answer is 125 degrees but the triangle on the left has 190 degrees in it

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    [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (12 children)

    125°

    Edit: Damn I'm getting roasted for getting it wrong. I totally am wrong, but when I've been awake for only 5 minutes that's bound to happen XD

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    It's a trap. The drawing is misleading. If the left triangle already has 60° and 40° then only 80° remains. Meaning there's no right angle. The vertical line should be leaning to the left slightly. The correct answer is 135°.

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    [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Either this is drawn wrong or they broke geometry

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    [–] 10 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    the answers here assume that the base is a continuous, straight line

    given one of the angles on the left triangle is a right angle on the diagram, but 80 if you calculate it, you can't assume that

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Doing 5th grade math makes me feel like a fucking genius. Cant believe I figured it out tbh

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