Saturday, May 19, 2012

Word Problems Are Stupid

I never got word problems in math. I could do trig, calculus, but start asking me how long it would take for two trains to meet, with one going 80 miles per hour and having to travel X number of miles while the other was going X miles per hour and needed to travel 120 miles...my answer was always, "How the eff should I know? I never travel on trains."


As a Pleiadian, I travel by space ship and there's no point in asking how long it will take. The answer is always, "Less than one second."


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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousAugust 31, 2012 at 1:40 PM

    I also used to hate word problems, until I realized once you get out of school and have a job that actually uses math, all of those problems are word problems. Nobody sets up the equations for you. You have to determine what data is relevant, and set the equation up yourself. THEN you get to do the easy part of solving eht equation.
    And, believe me, those little pissant "when do the trains meet" and "how far apart are they at time t" problems are easy.

    Ogrrre

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    Replies
    1. ButtercupAugust 31, 2012 at 4:24 PM

      Yes, all "real world" math problems are story problems, but they relate to what you're doing and the problem that needs solving, so they just seem logical to me. The joke here is that story problems we had to do in school were ridiculously irrelevant to any set of circumstances. Purely random.

      And they certainly seemed that way to me.

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    2. AnonymousSeptember 1, 2012 at 3:11 PM

      One of my favorites of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons was "Hell's Library", which showed a wall of books with such titles as "Word Problems", "More Word Problems", "Word Problems Galore and More", with a math phobe in the foreground, and a grinning Satan in the background.

      Ogrrre

      Delete
    3. ButtercupSeptember 1, 2012 at 10:29 PM

      Gary Larson is one of those crazy minds that deserves a national award. I own every book of cartoons he published. LOVE HIM.

      Delete

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