Comments on: Word Problems in all Math Classes

By: Uncle Ruckus

Uncle Ruckus — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:18:41 +0000

I lol’d.

By: Neuviana

Neuviana — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:55:23 +0000

My high school math teacher actually ripped the railroad-themed problems. He said, “I don’t care, there will be a switch house where the tracks meet, and someone will move the switch and make sure the trains don’t collide.”

By: Lyla

Lyla — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:45:18 +0000

Lmao!!!!!

By: rob

rob — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:48:29 +0000

too much purple…

By: Kristina

Kristina — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:09:54 +0000

One should be done for English sentences. They always have random names that are either old fashioned, weird or just plain stupid.

By: Atlas67

Atlas67 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:48:43 +0000

THIS IS GRAPHJAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By: GreyStation

GreyStation — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:43:58 +0000

THIS IS MADNESS!!!!

By: OfTheElite

OfTheElite — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:43:26 +0000

what about fencing off pools?
or the area of a lawn?
This is blasphamy!

By: ThatGirl

ThatGirl — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:42:01 +0000

Hey that was me!
you didnt return my calls!
im coming over
now

By: Mills

Mills — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:17:58 +0000

Owned. Haha

By: Columbia_RHPS

Columbia_RHPS — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:24:25 +0000

then there are the height AND age differences of siblings/friends

By: Nulono

Nulono — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:37:08 +0000

Sorry, I meant to say: “I AM A TWAT”

By: TheObject

TheObject — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:08:34 +0000

Then you should have excluded the ‘ALL’. This only applies to generic public school courses which are non-college preporatory.

By: TheObject

TheObject — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:06:12 +0000

ALL math class…

Odd that I don’t recall encountering any of these post-Algebra.

By: anus man

anus man — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:50:06 +0000

and also in the word problems the character was called ‘little johnny’ 90 percent of the time.

like…”Little Johnny has a 100N red bike…blah blah”

By: Adhe

Adhe — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:33:42 +0000

Actually I made this and I’m 27, so “Wkt”, I am surely not in 4th grade. I saw another graph regarding the contents of a calculus problem and it reminded me of all the ridiculous word problems in various math classes throughout Jr. High and High School. Jokes relating to shared childhood qualms usually elicit the most giggles…so I went ahead and made it, even though it was a little like the calculus one.

By: adhd

adhd — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:11:22 +0000

there is no fkn way im reading all that

By: The Anonymouse

The Anonymouse — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:17:03 +0000

I think “Problems that involve the falling or moving of ridiculous objects such as whales and bananas” should have been included and given a fair percentage, or would that be for physics?

By: Lyn

Lyn — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:24:36 +0000

In my physics class we mostly had problems involving potential car wrecks, probably because the class was about 90% jocks and the teacher needed some way to keep them paying attention. He always used the names of the students, and the questions almost always came down to “Did so-and-so die?” Kind of morbid, but it mostly worked. He’d occasionally throw in some space travel ones for my benefit, too. I don’t think we ever had any like these in that class. As for my other math classes, we had a lot with fruit, farm animals and coins, and a few with cars going in various directions, but I don’t remember any with sibling age differences or trains.

By: Honolulu

Honolulu — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 12:27:52 +0000

That probably instilled a lifelong fear of flying in a few students.

By: OMG

OMG — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 11:35:02 +0000

Good job

By: OMG

OMG — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 11:31:26 +0000

You forgot Connex in Australia. They suck too.

By: Wkt

Wkt — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:27:56 +0000

This confirms my suspicions that everyone here is in 4th grade.

By: Petrograd

Petrograd — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:39:33 +0000

We had a math problem where you got to calculate the speed at which an airplane was flying.

The answer was 108 kmph (~67.5 mph).

I will never forget it…

By: Michelle

Michelle — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:13:42 +0000

I was just going to mention lamp posts. Optimization and minimization of cost functions as well.

Related rates for the lose ):

By: Jupiter

Jupiter — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:46:59 +0000

That, and the problems about the change of shadow size when walking under a streetlamp. Darn related rates…I could never get those. But I’m done with calc forever, so it’s okay!

By: Jordan

Jordan — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:55:59 +0000

You don’t seem like the type that could solve a train problem…

By: Destin

Destin — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:44:50 +0000

For sure, sliding ladders are your bread and butter in calc.

By: Thomas Ziano

Thomas Ziano — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:29:40 +0000

She’ll kill you man…

By: Jupiter

Jupiter — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:18:02 +0000

I had a math book in middle school that used the name Osama.

By: Snickers

Snickers — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:57:42 +0000

Ours too! It was incredibly strange!

By: PapaJon

PapaJon — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:24:09 +0000

I had my own mom for a math teacher in the 5th grade. But the voices told me I turned out just fine.

Then in HS geometry that scary crazy stalker girl who really liked me sat next to me in class. All I remember about geometry is that crazy girl kept carving in her binder with a large pocket knife… always staring… and carving … and staring… and carving…. “proofs?” she wrote in a note handed to me, ” I have ‘proof’ you’ll be my boyfriend… FOREVER!”

Then last night I did some math to figure out how to make an equal sided octagon. It was awful. Painful even. I was, like, thinking and stuff. Today I am having issues straight things keeping.

By: Mathman

Mathman — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:45:51 +0000

No balls in urns? No sliding ladders? *Someone* hasn’t taken stats or calc yet.

By: wralford

wralford — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:29:08 +0000

Yes, word problems are more useful for Physics rather than straight math. If you think about it, most engineering is a series of word problems.

By: barboid

barboid — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:58:15 +0000

I wish you had been my math teacher. I was hideous at these kinds of math problems and what did I find on tests such as the PSAT? Word problems and those hideous comparison ones. f is to t as a is to *blank* and the words were so similar that I couldn’t tell if my life depended on it. Now my sixteen-yr-old daughter is smarter than I–she’s good at logical stuff like geometry (I wasn’t) but is having trouble in honors algebra (I did a decent job in algebra, but I don’t want to admit how old I really am!)

By: SnowBro

SnowBro — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:18:55 +0000

I’d rather just teach math, and not give these silly word problems at all. Oh, that would be beautiful. But yes, it’s the students. They always want to know “What’s this good for?” I haven’t a clue! If I did, I’d probably be teaching you that instead of math! Or I’d be doing that instead of teaching, and making a lot more money!

Being able to turn word problems, or real world problems, into math problems is a useful skill, and that’s the point of the exercises. The particular scenario is not actually that important.

I don’t recall ever seeing a train problem or a fruit problem, and I’ve never knowingly given one to my students. I’ve had to do coin problems myself (in a graduate course at that!), and I’ve given them to my students.

Teaching students “useful math” is not as easy as it sounds. I honestly wish I could spend more time on it, but there is too much “useless math” that needs to be taught in a term, so there is no time to go into enough detail about the applications to do them justice. I know that there are hoards of applications of math in the sciences and engineering. Not being an expert in any of these fields, I would probably botch the presentation. It’s better to leave it to the experts to explain the applications of the math in the science and engineering courses for which my courses are prerequisites. I also suspect that if I did go into detail about the applications, and made students do work on it, they would regret ever having asked what math is good for.

By: SickleYield

SickleYield — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:58:32 +0000

In Physics it’s always those cretin “drive a cart off a ramp” problems. If they’re in a creative mood they come up with something more creative, like driving a car off a cliff. Yippeee.

By: kjthr

kjthr — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 03:33:40 +0000

That’s cause the conductor didn’t do his math right.

By: Anne

Anne — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:01:37 +0000

Those train problems never compensated for the fact that Amtrak trains are late 95% of the time.

By: Ling-Wong

Ling-Wong — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:24:44 +0000

It’s funny this is on here — as I was driving today, I was thinking about how I had never learned how to solve those train problems and I was trying to figure out how I would have done it.

I am obviously NOT a mathematician.

By: Alaina

Alaina — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:57:21 +0000

We had the train problem..I’ve never been able to solve it.. something like

If train A left the station at 5:15 and it take and hour to reach *insert make believe place* blah blah blah

By: FL910

FL910 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:29:59 +0000

The thing I see most are crazy names like Ling-Wong or Geraldo.

By: Luke

Luke — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:18:18 +0000

Our calculus books repeatedly used the example of heating a yam in the oven.

By: Mat

Mat — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:46:13 +0000

Yay! More of the same.

By: Radar

Radar — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:27:14 +0000

I think I did fruit and coins, I have never ever had to solve a “Train-problem”.

By: David

David — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:47:07 +0000

I’d say those are most common in Physics classes, not Math classes.

By: ZedoMann

ZedoMann — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:42:42 +0000

Most I’ve seen have been Siblings Age differences.

By: Fizzix

Fizzix — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:37:33 +0000

This. It are trufax. (Except in Stats.)

What about height differences?

By: Nulono

Nulono — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:09:13 +0000

FIRST!!!