Solving A Word Problem

I’m writing a children’s chapter book and wrote this scene, which I realized was too long.  But I enjoyed writing it, and it totally reminded of my tutoring days.  So I thought I’d share it as a blog post.  Enjoy!

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Mom wants to help me with my math homework, so she read me a word problem.

“Maria needs to interview some students for an article she is writing for the school paper. If she scheduled 1/4 of an hour to talk with each one, how much time did she need to talk with 7 students?”

I don’t say anything.

 “Let’s think through it.  How much time is a quarter of an hour?” 

I think about a quarter and how much it’s worth, so I say, “25 minutes.”

“That would be right if there were 100 minutes in hour, but there aren’t.  How many minutes are in an hour?”

“60,” I say.

“That’s right.  So if you divide 60 by 4, what do you get?”

“I don’t know.  I would need some paper to figure that out.”

“No you don’t.”  She pulls out the old plastic yellow clock I used to play with when I was little.  It has a big hand and little hand and little marks for all the minutes.  So there is a 5 above the 1, a 10 above the 2, a 15 above the 3…you get the picture.  It shows how each one of the numbers goes up by 5s. 

“I don’t really see how that can help me divide 60 by 4,” I say.

“Well, the 6 is half of 12, and that represents 30 minutes.  And a half of a half is one fourth.  So that represents 15, see?”  She tries to show me what she means on the clock, but I’m really not in the mood to concentrate on math.

“If you say so.”

“It’s not because I say so.  It’s a way of showing you on the clock how to divide 60 by 4.”

“Okay,” I say.  By now, I have completely forgotten the problem we were trying to solve in the first place.

She gives me a pencil and lets me do some long division, where I figure out that 60 divided by 4 is 15.  “So the answer is 15,” I say.

“No, that’s how they trick you.  That’s just the first step.  For every student Maria sees, she needs 15 minutes, but she has to see 7 students, so how many minutes is that?”

 “A lot more than 15,” I say. 

“That’s true, but in math they want you to calculate exactly how many.  So how would you do that?  Do you need to add, subtract, multiply, or divide?”

I know it needs to be more, so that’s either add or multiply, and since we’ve been working on multiplication facts lately, I guess “Multiply.”

“That’s right!”  Mom seems encouraged. 

So I multiply 15 times 7 and get 105.  “105,” I say.

“105 what?”  Mom asks.

I think she has forgotten that we’re working on my homework, since old people forget stuff, so I say, “105 is the answer.”

“Yes, but what does 105 represent?  Seconds, minutes, hours?  Since we were talking about 15 minutes before, I guess, “minutes.”

“Right again.  You’re on a roll!  But there’s still one more step.  See all the answer choices are in hours and minutes, not just minutes, so we need to figure out how to turn 105 into hours and minutes.”

“Okay.”

“So what do you think we should do? Add, subtract, multiply or divide?”

I figure I just multiplied, so I probably don’t need to do that again.  And it’s been a long time since we did word problems with adding and subtracting in them, so I guess “divide.”

“That’s right.  Now what numbers are we dividing?”

“I’m not sure.”

Well you calculated 105 minutes, and how many minutes are in an hour?

“60.”

“That’s right.”

So I put the 60 inside the dividing sign and the 105 on the outside, and I try to divide that, but I get confused because 105 is bigger than 60.

“You’ve got it backwards,” Mom says. 

I cross out the first division problem and set up the second one with the 105 on the inside this time and a 60 on the outside.  After calculating it out, I get 1 with a remainder of 45.

“What does that represent?”

I want to say, “the answer,” but I know that’s not what she wants to hear.  So instead I say, “the time?” 

“Yes.  But I was thinking more about what it represents in terms of hours and minutes.  Since 45 hours and 1 minute is a really long time, I say, “One hour and forty-five minutes.”   

“Perfect,” she says. 

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Joke:  Every time I see a math word problem, it looks like this:  If I have 10 ice cubes and you have 11 apples, how many pancakes will fit on the roof?

Answer:  Purple because aliens don’t wear hats.    – Author Unknown

Quote:  “Math teaches you that when you are cold, you should go to a corner, since it’s 90 degrees there.” – Author Unknown

Advice:  Try to laugh at your problems.  In the future when you are looking back on them, you will remember what made them funny.