Bubba has a still that produces 700 gallons of alcohol per
week. If the tax on alcohol is $1.50 per gallon, how much tax will Bubba pay in amonth? [Set up and analyze a model, then discuss applicability of the model.]
I have given an example with obvious cultural bias because I am not sure I could successfully avoid it. At any rate students in my area in rural Virginia would think this problem is hilarious. We have a long tradition of illegal distilleries and they would know that Bubba has no intention of ever paying any tax.
21 June 2010
Bad word problems
An example of a bad word problem, from Frank Quinn's article The Nature of Contemporary Core Mathematics, who is at Virginia Tech:
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3 comments:
Why bad?
You might enjoy this post, on making word problems work better for students, by using mythological settings.
The most obvious reason this is a bad problem is because the production is per week, but the tax is per month - and the number of weeks in a month varies from month to month. There are at least 5 plausible answers, by my figuring.
No, really... Does it say in the article that it is a bad problem? I've partly read the article and it's quite interesting. If I read the part where the example is taken from correctly, it says that you should give word problems that emphasize the model/reality distiction, and that the example problem does this, because everybody knows that Bubba would never really pay taxes.
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