It was meant to be a lighthearted demonstration of the challenges facing French high schoolers. Instead, it became a viral moment of televised arithmetic failure. A seasoned journalist for TF1’s flagship evening news program, “20 Heures,” committed a glaring mathematical error while attempting a percentage problem on live television, only to be playfully corrected by the show’s anchor.
A Calculator-Free Exam and a Journalistic Challenge
The segment, aired on Friday, June 12 covered the 2026 edition of the baccalaureate and the anticipated mathematics exam taken by first-year students. The key change this year was a strict ban on calculators, a measure implemented by the Ministry of Education to assess students’ mental calculation skills. Reactions from students leaving the exam were mixed, with one succinctly describing the experience as “bad” and another noting the difficulty of verifying answers without the familiar tool.
To conclude his report, journalist Michel Izard decided to “try the experiment” himself. He posed a work-related math problem: “Knowing that my segment lasts two minutes and I’m allowed a 15% overrun, how many extra seconds does that give me?” Working through the calculation by hand on camera, he arrived at an answer of 12.5 seconds.
Anchor’s Swift Correction Lights Up Social Media
The only issue was that his math was completely wrong. In a video posted to social media after the broadcast, anchor Anne-Claire Coudray delivered a humorous but precise correction. “Geez Michel, you’re really terrible at math,” she teased. “We did a cross-multiplication, 15% of two minutes is 18 seconds, not 12 and a half seconds.”
Izard’s sheepish defense was immediate. “Yeah, well, I haven’t done math since my own baccalaureate!” he said, emphasizing that he had pursued a literary track. Coudray’s retort was swift: “Maybe you should retake it.”
The Root of the Miscalculation
The on-screen evidence made the error easy to diagnose. To calculate 15% of 120 seconds, Izard incorrectly multiplied 100 by 15/120. The correct method requires multiplying 120 by 15/100, a fundamental principle of cross-multiplication for finding percentages. The mistake transformed a simple arithmetic exercise into a memorable lesson broadcast to the entire nation.
The incident served as an ironic, if unintentional, endorsement of the Education Ministry’s new focus on mental math, proving that even professionals can stumble over basic calculations under pressure.
