The Wide World of Math Problems

There are probably an infinite number of math problems. When you are studying math in elementary or high school, you have no idea of the hugeworld of math that exists at the college and post-college levels. Additionally, when youre studying elementary-level math, its sometimes hard to make the connection between seemingly-insignificant math problems and the ultimate power that math has to solve problems in real life.

Think of medicine, for example. The same people who, as children, labored over long division and quadratic equations, have eventually used the building blocks of those elementary math problems to help eliminate major diseases such as the mumps and rubella. By turning health problems into math problems, collecting data and turning it into numbers, public health workers and epidemiologists figured out what was causing these diseases. Then, they solved the math problems and figured out how to get rid of the diseases. Without the elementary building blocks of addition, subtraction, algebra, geometry, calculus, and statistics, this could not have happened. Mastery of solving math problems allowed scientists to solve health threatsand relieve human suffering. They can then analyze the effect of various solutions to those problems with controlled trials. All of this would not be possible without math.

At the college level, students usually see those seemingly meaningless math problems, like how much bread Joe can carry if his bicycle has a basket that is 1 foot by 1 foot, turn into real-life issues. Social scientists have to learn by doing the same tedious math problems. When they get to graduate school, the statistical part of the math problems is often done with SPSS. However, the student has to understand what the data is telling her/him and know how to input it into the program in order for it to work.

Improving your house is also another area where you will encounter math problems. Have you ever wanted to figure out how much paint to buy for a certain area of wall when the paint comes in containers of a certain size, considering that you will need several coats? This is not a really advanced math problem, but it does show how math applies to everyday life. Its for this reason that everyone in the United States is required to achieve at least a basic competency in math. Educators know that without basic math skills, we would be impeded in many aspects of our lives.

When we think of solving math problems, the idea makes many of us cringe. We think of the word "problem" as something we want to get rid of. It would be better if we called them "math puzzles" instead. Doesnt that make it sound more enticing? Math puzzle sounds like a game, something even a child would want to do. Problem has a negative connotation, whereas puzzle sounds mysterious and exciting, something you just want to delve into to figure out how to put it together. Thats really more accurate as to what math is all about anyway. When we do math problems, we take various parts of the puzzle, various concepts, and we put them together. That is the mystery part and provides the frame for the puzzle. In real life we always have some elements of the puzzle, like the speed of a vehicle and how far the vehicle is going to go. That's the information that we have to put together with the concepts. Then we take the information and the framework to put the pieces together and put it into the frame. This is what math problems really are.
Robert operates a tutoring site called MathTrench, which provides thousands of solved math problems.