Singling Out the Question

A math word problem is full of words — big surprise Word problems really represent the real world. When you have a problem to solve at the office involving ordering new file cabinets, you don t sit down to write out your times tables, and you aren t handed a piece of paper with an algebra problem asking you to solve 2x + 3 = 27. To be successful with a word problem, you 

One of my favorite sayings is When you re knee deep in alligators, it s hard to remember that your mission is to drain the swamp. This certainly applies to math word problems and sorting out what the question is from all the other stuff. Consider the following problem. See if you can find the question in all the verbiage. 

The Problem The 17 office workers and 4 managers at Super Mart all need new file cabinets before the end of this month, which has 31 days. The file cabinets cost 300 each, and the supplier of file cabinets will haul away the old cabinets for 5 each. How much will it cost to replace the file cabinets if each of the office workers takes his old file cabinet home and each of the managers elects to have them hauled away  

There s a lot of information in this problem, but you need to first look for the question — what is it that you want to find Look for what, how many, how much, when, find, or other questioning or seeking words. Ignore the rest for now until you determine what you re looking for. Is it a number of file cabinets Is it an amount of money Is it a number of people Get your question nailed down, and then worry about how to put it all together. In this problem, the question is basically How much money  

If you can t stand to let a problem go unanswered and you want to solve this one, the answer is 6,320. You figure out how much money it costs by determining how much was spent on each office worker and then adding the total to how much the managers spent. Each of the 17 office workers spent just 300 (just the cost of the cabinets), so 17 x 300 = 5,100. The managers had their file cabinets hauled away, which added 5 on to the cost. The total for each manager is 305, so 4 x 305 = 1,220. Add the amounts together, and the cost of the file cabinets for the entire office is 5,100 + 1,220 = 6,320. 

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