There are many math teachers, and many PhD math professors, who think that contrived word problems are a hinderance to "critical thinking." Problems are often built from formulas rather than real-world situations and are often written by folks who have no real-world experience (count me among them as far as surveying goes, but we all know that.)
My son had an industrial real-world problem involving huge (industrial sized) rolls of paper. The problem was to measure the diameter of a partial roll and determine if there was enough paper, linear measure, to complete the operation being considered.
He solved it by correlating weight, diameter, and linear measure and I did it with arithmetic series. We got the same answer within a few feet, so we knew what the deal was when a partial roll was loaded.
Point is, two different critical thinkers approaching the same problem from different points of view. And neither of us ever saw that problem in a book. I think that Amazon is on to something with their employment tests.
You??re welcome you old fart blossom.
i had an English teacher in high school that issued the same test but instead of standing up and turning around we had to stand up and recite our name out loud. Guess who was the very first person to make an idiot of themselves? ?????ÿ
@mathteacher?ÿ ?ÿ I remember a problem in the real world like you and your son had about a roll of paper.
I used Calculus and measured the thickness of the paper plus the diameters of the roll (outer diameter and
the diameter of the spool the paper was wrapped around).
Thanks for the post on how to solve the original problem; I see it is a question that Amazon might ask for employment: interesting.
?ÿ
JOHN NOLTON
