“A man left Albuquerque heading East” Babylonian Word Problems Reflections

Like most math students out there, I’ve got a love-hate relationship with word problems. Word problems are a great way to solidify concepts and they encourage students to think outside the box for solutions. However, the practicality and importance of word problems are often undermined due to occasionally wacky or excessively difficult examples that overwhelm and confuse students. More often than not, that inability to consistently connect their math work to their life is what affects today’s students the most. 

One comment that stood out in the reading was “while many other mathematical and literary forms have been lost or discarded over time, these word problems have persisted.” In terms of Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics, I think a big difference was that learning mathematics was more purposeful to the students, because they were tackling more directly applicable and practical concepts than abstract ones. They also had a division between everyday and extended mathematics, which was taught in a way to deepen learning. So, since the overall centuries-spanning intent of (convoluted) word problems was to develop our complex processing, I think the real issue with word problems today comes from poor marketing and a lack of transparency to the students. Mathematical word problems have been able to stand the test of time because they are how we learn complex processing, which has been fundamental to our development as a species. At its core, these problems require extracting relevant information, scanning our mental archives for the most appropriate solution, and reflecting on the correctness of our methods and results; these three steps are what we use all the time to carry out both short and long term activities in our lives. However, students often critique the relevance of specific topics rather than pay attention to the subconscious skill building that occurs. There’s no longer the same division between everyday or extended mathematics because of the way our societies have developed; and this means that teachers need to be more explicit to today’s students about the skills they can develop when doing problems rather than trying to explain specific real life examples where one or two ideas is helpful. 

Just as a further research side note- in terms of my future math classrooms, I’m interested in studying the psychology behind learning mathematics. I think understanding that learning process, as well as building on what I’ve learned in this class of mathematics history, will contribute to a much more purposeful and skill-developing oriented teaching style.