this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Nah, the angle isn’t specified as a right angle. We can’t assume it’s 90° just because it’s drawn that way, because it isn’t drawn to scale.

Left triangle has 180° total. 60+40=100, which means that middle line is actually 80°, not 90. And since the opposite side is the inverse, we know it is 100° on the other side.

100+35=135. We know the right triangle also has 180° total, so to find the top corner we do 180-135=45. So that top corner of the right triangle is 45°, meaning x must be 135° on the opposite side.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago

I mean, it's visibly an acute angle wether it's labelled as such or not.

[–] TheGrandNagus 214 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (8 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.

[–] greyfox 69 points 3 days ago (1 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.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 days ago (3 children)

This is what I was thinking. The image is not to scale, so it is risky to say that the angles at the bottom center add up to 180, despite looking that way. If a presented angle does not represent the real angle, then presented straight lines might not represent real lines.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (9 children)
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This is the geometry version of those stupid poorly written math equations. Engagement bait.

The real answer is always "it's unsolveable due to poor/missing notation".

[–] cucumber_sandwich 5 points 1 day ago

But it's not unsolvable, just a misleading drawing...

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It’s not unsolvable at all. The answer is x=135°. The triangles simply aren’t drawn to scale; The line between them isn’t a 90° angle, (even though it is drawn that way) because it is not specifically marked as 90° with a square angle mark.

[–] billwashere 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Either this is drawn wrong or they broke geometry

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The triangles aren’t drawn to scale. The middle line isn’t a 90° angle, because it isn’t specifically marked with a square angle in the corner. Triangles always add up to 180°, so the angle in the left triangle is actually 80°, not 90°.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 days ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 67 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 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....^

[–] ngwoo 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Geometry diagrams in math problems should never be assumed to be to scale

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

The internal angles of a triangle always add up to 180⁰, therefore the one pixel offset is irrelevant because the unlabelled angle is, despite what the image suggests, ~~60~~ 80⁰.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 3 days ago (14 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.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 3 days ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Mathematician here; I second this as a valid answer. (It's what I got as well.)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Random guy who didn't sleep in middle school here: I also got the same answer.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago (1 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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 days ago (12 children)

Unless there are lines that are not straight in the image (which would make the calculation of x literally impossible), the third angle of the triangle in the left has to be 80°, making the angle to its right to be 100°, making the angle above it to be 45°, making the angle above it to be 135°. This is basic trigonometry.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 days 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.

[–] qarbone 21 points 3 days ago (7 children)

I mean, the assumption shouldn't be anything about scale. It should be that we're looking at straight lines. And if we can't assume that, then what are we even doing.

But, assuming straight lines, given straight lines you find the other side of an intersecting line because of complements.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

I'd argue that the bottom line is indeed one continuous line regardless of how many other lines intersect on it, because there's nothing indicating that the line is broken at the intersection.

Now the only reason I think the lines are straight at all is use of the angular notations at the ends, which would be horribly misleading to put at the end of curves or broken lines.

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[–] Skullgrid 46 points 3 days ago (5 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

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 days ago (1 children)

135°.

The non-right-angle is downright cheeky.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago (3 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago
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