Word Problems Examples

Any English phrase that makes it sound like we're adding things together means we're...well, adding things together. Thing + thing + thing + thing. We can abbreviate any such phrase using a + sign....

Some English phrases are clearly talking about multiplication. You hear that, phrases? We can read through your subtext.The product of 3 and 4 is 3 × 4.  Three times five is 3 × 5. ...

Sometimes we have a direct translation from English to math, since the symbol ÷ abbreviates the phrase "divided by.'' None of that shady "together with" or "product of" business.Like so: five d...

When evaluating algebraic expressions, we evaluate things inside parentheses first. Think of the parentheses as two bananas that are quickly ripening, and you need to down them before they turn...

When a problem contains a word for an unknown number or quantity, we use a variable to represent that unknown number or quantity. Just replace those unknowns with x, or y, or z, or just about an...

Don't you hate it when someone's translating something from another language and they go so quickly that you can't keep up? We hate that, too. We also hate it when we need to go from English to mat...

We've already done a lot of word problems, many of which had straightforward translations into mathematical symbols. When word problems contain more words, we naturally need to work a little har...