I need help with a math question

[Jamesman42]

It's not the math I need help with though..it's the wording or implied idea. I bet I got your attention though

I am working through some problems for a financial math class I'm teaching, and one of the questions involves this statement "She wants to save up $2000 over the course of the next 18 months. How much should she save per week to meet her goal?"

I know the math of it. I am not sure if I assume it is 18 x 4 = 72 weeks, assuming one month is 4 weeks, or if I assume since one year (12 months) is 52 weeks and 6 more months equates to 26 more weeks, coming out to 78 weeks. Common sense tells me to pick the latter option since it is realistic and true, but I'm looking for opinions from y'all on this as well because I thought of the former while thinking about it. I am using a student edition of the book til Wednesday.

[alirocker08]

Latter option. Otherwise people will accuse you of making trick questions. If you do the latter then only those lacking in a bit of common sense will trip up and so they'll learn from their mistakes, whereas if you choose the former then those who know how many weeks there are in the year would quite unfairly get it wrong. ^^

[Jamesman42]

Alright, good advice as well...this is a problem from their book and I'm not even sure if they'll be given this problem, but those little nuances...I do wanna be fair to them

[Blazinarps]

Make them show their work and give them the question right if they answer either way properly.

[alirocker08]

It's best to be fair ^^ Make sure you point out where they could trip up though so they can keep an eye out for it in future questions.

[lonestar]

Your initial question confused me.  I'll stick to the cooking.

[Jamesman42]

Awesome tips people!

[73109]

To be honest, when I read the question and started doing it in my head, I used option one.

[kári]

As said, the latter obviously. I mean, one month isn't exactly 4 weeks.. (except for February when it's not a leap year)

[HarlequinForest]

I say go with the former.  If a month isn't always 4 weeks, then 6 months isn't always 26 weeks.  Besides, math problems like that do tend to use very generalized standards, like 1 month = 4 weeks, in order to avoid confusion like this.

[ddtonfire]

Is this with interest?

[Jamesman42]

No interest.

I say go with the former.  If a month isn't always 4 weeks, then 6 months isn't always 26 weeks.  Besides, math problems like that do tend to use very simple standards like, 1 month = 4 weeks, in order to avoid confusion like this.

Hmm, good point