what is the difficulties of solving word problems in mathematics?

Answer 1

The first difficulty is separating the useless information from the stuff you'll need to do the problem. It is not always true that all the information in the problem will be necessary to get the answer.

The other difficulty is transfering the information you have in the word problem into the appropriate equation. You need to have a good idea of what the equation is, what all its parts are, and what its used for before working on word problems.

Answer 2

Yeah, I know what you mean. When I went to school we called them "thought problems", and I hated them. It's much easier to follow a mathematical formula when it's listed in the expected manner, such as, 2 x 2 = 4. But when it's worded as a paragraph, your brain has to go into overdrive to figure out how the problem would pose in an ordinary way. Here's another example: "John had 18 apples in a box. Joe had nine apples. How many more apples did John have than Joe, and what would be the answer percentage wise?" Of course, this is a very, very simple example, but first you'd have to do the subtraction, taking away nine apples from 18, which of course is nine. Then you'd have to do the percentage, which is 50 percent. But it takes a lot longer, and if the problem is more complex, which they usually are, then you have to do the translation before you can do the math. This is where algebra comes in handy, but only if you are proficient with algebraic formulae; ex. X = apple, etc. Therefore, I truly sympathize with anyone who has to perform word problems in a math exam.

Answer 3

The biggest is translating the problem into mathematics. (That's because we tend to teach math backwards, spending way too much time on calculation of mathematically stated "problems" and not nearly enough time understanding the world mathematically.)

You have to understand the facts and the question you are being asked, and then restate the question using mathematical symbols and notation.

Solving after that point is usually the easiest part.

If we taught math properly, word problems wouldn't give students such difficulties.

Answer 4

1. You need to find out just exactly what is being asked.
2. You need to find the information that you'll need to write an equation(s) that can be solved -- and to determine if you have enough information to write the equation(s) needed.
3. You need to ignore irrelevant stuff that's included in the paragraph.

Answer 5

In solving word problems, i generally felt that students do two mistakes.
1) they don't understand exact meaning of question.
2)they feel it hard to frame the problem in terms of unknown quantities.