What is the answer to this infamous "Common Core" question? The following question (number 15 of this test) has become infamous as a poor "Common Core" question. What is the correct answer?


  Juanita wants to give bags of stickers to her friends. She wants to
  give the same number of stickers to each friend. She's not sure if she
  needs 4 bags or 6 bags of stickers. How many stickers could she buy so
  there are no stickers left over?
This "infamous" question is so poorly worded, but any mathematical answer that can be given would reinforce the perception that "the question is OK, see, it has a valid answer!"

The question is not OK.

Word problems should not be about mulling over "what did the author want to say?". Even the "trick" questions are normally about spotting some well-defined linguistic (or mathematical) trick, rather than based on complete lack of clarity. Plus, note it was not meant to be a trick question, but some standard question meant to assess how well students of certain age comprehend divisibility and common multipliers.

I can personally think about a dozen different ways to write a word problem which would boil down to the same mathematical problem and will be better worded.

As for this question, I hope if it was on some exam, that it did not affect anyone's passing or failure. I can relate to a poor methodical soul who got stuck for two hours on that question, trying to get their head around it and failing to comprehend it (and also wasting precious time for the following questions) not realising that it is not their fault.
The answer is 5.    

Juanita cannot decide whether to buy "4" or "6" bags because she has 5 friends.   In common core lingo "5" is between "4" and "6."  And "4" and "6" are the clue numbers given in the problem--pay attention! LOL This is how we know Juanita has 5 friends.  Since Juanita doesn't seem to know how many stickers are in each bags, she simply buys 5 stickers.