Mastering word problems
I don’t think I had any elementary school teachers who knew how to teach word problems effectively. I was just reading that mastering certain rules such as the properties of numbers (Associative, Commutative, etc.) actually help people understand how to solve word problems.
If you think about it many of use know how to do the mechanics of math in every day applications (figuring out your bill at a restaurant, estimating how many bags of lawn fertilizer or grass seeds to buy to cover your lawn, etc.). But how many of us really realize when we’re actually applying the properties of numbers to solve these problems? I’m going to try to come up with as many examples of everyday applications of all of the properties below.
Off the top of my head I can think of a number of situations:
- Figuring out the bill at the tapas restaurant
- Adding needed yardage of different colors of yarn
- Determining our grocery budget
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A + B = B + A and A*B = B*A
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(A + B) + C = A + (B + C) and (A * B) * C = A * (B * C)
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A + -A = 0, A * (1/A) = 1
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A + 0 = A, A * 1 = A
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A*(B + C) = (A*B) + (A*C)
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