Overview:
Verbal math problems, also known as “word problems”, present example situations involving numbers or quantities. Such problems ask students to apply their knowledge of mathematical operations to set up equations and solve them. When those problems involve unknown quantities, letters representing variables can be used.
What Information Is Presented?
In verbal math problems, a certain amount of numerical information is always given, such as the number of items, the price of each item, or the total amount. A good first step to solving the problem is to summarize the quantities that are there. This requires careful reading for details.
What Information Is Unspecified?
Variables can be chosen to represent unspecified information. For example, if all that is known is that a quantity is 10 less than another quantity, it can be represented as r – 10. Then the other quantity might be represented as p + 10. If the total is unknown in another problem, it could then be represented by a different variable.
What Operations Need to Be Used?
Read the problem carefully to determine what operations need to be used. Some clues to addition include phrases like “the sum of”, “increased by”, “the total of” and “added to”, while subtraction clues are phrases like “the difference of”, “decreased by”, or “less than”. Multiplication terms include “the product of ” or “times”, and division terms include “ratio” or divided by”.
What Expressions Can Be Written?
Before the problem can be solved, all the necessary information to solve it needs to be combined. It might be helpful to put the numerical information in a chart or table and show the relationship between the numerical information and the variables. Then the numerical information, variables, and operations can be combined into an expression before the problem can be solved.
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