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Gee, First, I would not buy a TV @ 399. I might, however, buy one @199. Train B with Aunt Martha on board left New York at 6 AM.
If I bought a TV @ 399, I'd follow it with a TV stand and a comfy recliner, NOT a desk and chair. The bowl of fake fruit cost me $10.00 and the average of the 3 DVDs I bought was $6.
If all three cost me a whopping $800, {rounded}, and the TV stand was half the value of the TV, but the lamp was 3/4 the cost of the TV stand, how much were the items I bought, not including the bowl of fake fruit, the lamp and the 3 DVDs I acquired when Train A left the station in San Diego?
Mr. Jones bought a TV at $399. He then bought a desk and a chair. The average cost of the desk and chair is $108 lower than the average cost of all 3 items. How much did Mr. Jones pay for his deck and chair? (assume no tax)
You're all wrong.
Correct answer - Cannot be determined
We have no information about the deck in order to determine its' price.
The proper solution for the problem.. Give math teachers better training in English, proofreading and typing so that the problem can be properly presented.
And this isn't a critical thinking test, so.. I have no responsibility to assume what the problem meant.
Gee, First, I would not buy a TV @ 399. I might, however, buy one @199. Train B with Aunt Martha on board left New York at 6 AM.
If I bought a TV @ 399, I'd follow it with a TV stand and a comfy recliner, NOT a desk and chair. The bowl of fake fruit cost me $10.00 and the average of the 3 DVDs I bought was $6.
If all three cost me a whopping $800, {rounded}, and the TV stand was half the value of the TV, but the lamp was 3/4 the cost of the TV stand, how much were the items I bought, not including the bowl of fake fruit, the lamp and the 3 DVDs I acquired when Train A left the station in San Diego?
Hmm...
The main idea is "I suck math, #^@& math". How is my reading comprehension?
We have no information about the deck in order to determine its' price.
The proper solution for the problem.. Give math teachers better training in English, proofreading and typing so that the problem can be properly presented.
And this isn't a critical thinking test, so.. I have no responsibility to assume what the problem meant.
I realize you are kind of making a funny, but there is a real point here. I've been a practicing physicist for 35 years and yet I still hate word problems. Never met a real world problem that was as obscure as most word problems are written. Even this problem I had to put algebraically to sort out what it was asking. Which BTW, we can't really answer the question written because all we can do is find the combined cost of the "deck" (sic) and chair, but cannot find the cost of the desk and the chair. There is an ambiguity to words that creates, in my opinion, most of the problems kids have with word problems.
Now I do have an issue with the use of the word "average" in this type problem. Too many people learn in grade school that average means to add them all up and divide. They then take this understanding into adult hood and misuse it for everything from the "law of averages" to forced ranking of employees.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rodentraiser
I wish I could do calculus. I've gone through 3A and 3B and I'm still lost. I've gotten umpteen books and workbooks on calculus and everyone of them is exactly the same, right down to the wording. I even get books which work through the answers, but they'll say something like "Therefore, we pick one..." and I'm left screaming, "Why? Why do you pick one and not another number?" I understand exactly how calculus works, but I can't set the problems up to save my life. The only things that made any sense were the word problems. Go figure.
Absolutely. One of the biggest problems I see in texts. They just pull the answer out of their .... Right alongside "the derivation is obvious and will be left as an exercise for the student" which can be translated into "the author has no clue how to do it." I had a professor assign me one of those as a take home exam and the "obvious" derivation took 27 pages. Not scrap paper, but 27 pages to write down. Turned out he had been given that problem when he was in college and couldn't solve it so he had been assigning it to someone in every class he had taught. I was the first student that did.
The proper solution for the problem.. Give math teachers better training in English, proofreading and typing so that the problem can be properly presented.
Math teachers occasionally make mistakes, even mathematical mistakes, just like other teachers. Prep time is limited. The kids who catch them get a couple free points. No big deal.
Your answer is valid, but galaxyhi's is not.
I guess I'm not smarter than a fourth grader, because it's over my head, even with the explanation. I've been lost ever since "new math" came in in the 1950s.
I realize you are kind of making a funny, but there is a real point here. I've been a practicing physicist for 35 years and yet I still hate word problems. Never met a real world problem that was as obscure as most word problems are written. Even this problem I had to put algebraically to sort out what it was asking. Which BTW, we can't really answer the question written because all we can do is find the combined cost of the "deck" (sic) and chair, but cannot find the cost of the desk and the chair. There is an ambiguity to words that creates, in my opinion, most of the problems kids have with word problems.
I think this problem is simple and easy to understand. What else is wrong besides the typo? How would you rewrite and make it free of ambiguity?
I think this problem is simple and easy to understand. What else is wrong besides the typo? How would you rewrite and make it free of ambiguity?
The typo part is a joke from another post above. As far as the original problem, there are several issues with it such as the somewhat misuse of average. Or the fact that it asks for the cost of the desk and chair, but only give enough information to calculate the combined cost, not the cost of the desk and the chair, unless we consider them a single package purchase.
Now, at this point you could say "you're reading too much into it" but that's the point; if someone can interpret it a different way, they will. Then, in a standardized test where you just bubble a blot, you get penalized not for the math, but for reading it different than the writer intended. Or more likely, the student read just what was intended because the author (mis)used words to set a trap.
Now, at this point you could say "you're reading too much into it" but that's the point; if someone can interpret it a different way, they will. Then, in a standardized test where you just bubble a blot, you get penalized not for the math, but for reading it different than the writer intended.
I'm the type of student who definitely reads more into questions than what they ask. A question on a psychology questionnaire tied me up in knots once. It was: Do you have trouble falling asleep at night because you're worried about your job?
I couldn't figure out how to answer it. Yes, I have problems occasionally falling asleep at night, but no, it wasn't because of my job. So what do I answer?
This definitely is part of the problem with math for me. As a visual learner, I had a terrible time in math and it wasn't until I got into community college with a teacher willing to put in the extra time to show me how the problems worked (I was 23 at the time!), that I finally understood algebra.
This is what I run into with calculus. A teacher is explaining something about finding the area inside a donut (the kind you eat). He keeps talking about the hole this and the hole that. Thirty minutes later I finally figure out the word he is using is "whole" and it's too late and there's not enough time to go back over the problem to make sure I understand it. And I've missed a key explanation that will leave a hole (pardon my pun) in my understanding of anything else in calculus that needs this understanding to set up and solve problems.
Has anybody here ever watch The Mechanical Universe? I was watching that and understanding physics before I was taking trig. That's how I wish algebra, trig, and calculus were taught. Well, for me anyway.
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