Dad Spots Glaring Mistake In 4-Year-Old Son's Bedtime Story: 'Wrong'

There's been plenty of buzz on social media after a confused dad shared a bee-based counting conundrum from his four-year-old son's book.

Mark Scoble took to Reddit to share the math problem he found in the book he was reading to his child at bedtime.

While it is not the kind of math problem that is going to lead to any sleepless nights, there was something about it that clearly didn't add up.

The reader is presented with a page full of pictures of buzzing bees. The task laid out at the top is simple: "Count these buzzing bees then follow the arrows to write the number."

Check out the challenge below and see if you can spot the mistake:

Writing alongside the post, the confused dad said: "Either I can't count or this book is teaching my son wrong..."

Sure enough, on closer inspection, the numbers simply do not add up: only 15 bees can be seen on the page, which is one short of the 16 required to make the challenge work.

There's no denying the fact that America has an issue when it comes to adult numeracy, literacy and problem-solving.

In 2019, a study by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) found 29 percent of U.S. adults performed at the lowest level for numeracy, with 19 percent hitting the same lows for literacy.

The research also revealed that of those adults comfortable with completing an assessment on the computer, 24 percent lacked basic digital problem-solving skills.

However, in this particular instance, matters were not helped by what was a glaring and obvious mistake in the children's book, a mistake many on social media were quick to poke fun at.

One Reddit user, Schautzi, told Scoble: "You are the sixteenth bee." Another, writing as Pietjiro, joked: "The sixteenth bee is the friends we make along the way."

OOONeoNooo couldn't resist referencing the Johnny Depp trial with the comment: "Amber Heard stepped on it..." while simfoe had Game of Thrones fans chuckling in agreement with the response: "And who has a better story than the sixteenth bee?"

RampantDragon took inspiration from The Matrix, writing: "First you must see that there is no bee, and it is really yourself you're bending" with uthyrbendragon eager to give the publishers the benefit of the doubt, responding: "Maybe by only putting 15 bees on the page it is encouraging youngsters to challenge the data given to them ... a noble idea if it were true."

Scoble, who is a dad-of-two, was reading the book to his four-year-old as a "bed time story" when they noticed the mistake.

At first he didn't quite believe it. "He counted it and said 15," Scoble told Newsweek. "I said 'no there's 16 bees! But then I counted it with him and realized the mistake!"

He's also sceptical of the idea that the error was intentional. "All the other pages had the correct number of animals," he said. "It was very odd."

Scoble decided to share the picture to social media for laughs. "I thought it was funny that it was a book to teach children how to count and it was wrong!"