It was absolutely shocking to learn that mathematical word problems date back to at least Babylonian times, and quite interesting indeed that those problems had the same issues with realism that many word problems today. It is little insights like these into the lives of people that came 4000+ years before us that really make me feel connected to these individuals that lived so long ago.
In my own learning I was the student who didn't read the words to the problem, but just extracted what I thought was the meaning based on the numbers and partied on. This happened from childhood into university, and I really had to make an effort at the end of an exam to review each problem (and really read each word!) to ensure I (1) hadn't missed anything and (2) answered what the question was actually asking. It always made me wonder what is the point of having a word problem to begin with when, just as we mentioned in class, the story doesn't matter? To me it always felt like the abstractions were the interesting bit, and the words were just "in the way".
I've come to realize that perhaps that was part of the lesson? Being able to filter through the noise of "reality" in order to apply the appropriate mathematics tool is a useful skill. One that I've used in my career as a data scientist many times. I worked for a biotech company where I'd work closely with biologists to investigate their questions through data. These started with a lot of noise! And very often an ill-defined question that we'd collaborate to refine. Despite being the student who didn't want to bother with the story, this back and forth was often my favourite part of the job.
No comments:
Post a Comment