Fun and Games With Jenners – Game 7: Wacky Word Problems
by Jenners • 07/06/2009 • Fun and Games • 21 Comments
This time out, the game was inspired by a post at the always wonderful and funny Jenni over at Jiggety Jigg. A while back, she has a post about a word problem in her son’s math homework that went like this:
Each basket held 16 watermelons. Dan collected 1/2 of a basket. Kim collected 2/3 of a basket. Who collected more apples? Show how you know.
You have to read Jenni’s post about the problem as it is quite funny, but the obvious problem with this question is that who the hell is collecting apples??? This post got me to thinking about word problems. I always sucked at them as I always got caught up in the details and the scenario and was able to concoct all kinds of legitimate reasons why my answer would be correct if this, that and the other thing had happened. In other words, I would create a complex back story to explain my (usually wrong) answer and not focus on the math problem at hand. (Have I mentioned that I suck at math? Cuz I do.) Plus I was easily razzled-dazzled by the superfluous information that wasn’t needed to solve the problem.
So I thought it would be fun to create word problems of our own. The idea here is to make them as ridiculous, detailed, impossible, stupid, and dramatic as possible. (In other words, the math does not matter.) You know, something along the lines of:
A train leaves Pittsburgh traveling 60 miles per hour at 6:00 pm. At 7:00 pm, a train traveling 70 miles per hour leaves Philadelphia. Assuming that Kevin left the door open when he went to school at 5:00 am, how many mosquitoes got into the house when Dad got home from work?
I’ll have my wacky word problems up on Friday — along with Mr. Linky so you can link up your own attempts. Can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Ahhhh yes…the math homework from hell!
Oh fun! I'll have to give this a try. I really hate math, too. In fact, does my word problem have to have numbers?
This sounds so fun!! As long as the math doesn't matter, I'm in!! LOL Loved reading this…just caught the apple thing!
I'm with Debbie…wine is definitely needed for this! lol! (and some eye candy would be helpful too…just sayin…)
I've never liked word problems! It tires my brain.
lol
No mosquitoes got in. That's the beauty of having a screen door.
I remember talking to myself out loud when trying to solve those word problems, as if logic would help.
Ok, I need to come up with something good!!!
Now this sounds fun. I need to unearthen my calendar so that I can pencil this game in!
I'm just going to say I'm going to do this one too, like I said I'd do the other ones. And then never get around to actually doing them.
I like to be consistent.
As always, I'm going to spend two straight hours trying to come up with something wonderfully witty, wind up with nothing, and still laugh hysterically at everyone else's awesomeness. And it's so worth it every time! I LOVE FUN AND GAME WITH JENNERS!
I used to love word problems. Actually, I used to love tests, period. Man, I was a nerd.
Oooh, this sounds like fun!!! Can't wait till Friday. You'll post or twitter a reminder right?
Oh, I gotta break out the wine to even attempt something like this!
Love it! You rock at these kind of posts. I might even attempt this one. I'll probably just get myself confused though. Haha
These kinds of problems were made to drive us crazy! If I could ever concentrate to the end, I might be able to figure it out.
This sounds like a great game. I have a serious loathing of story problems. If I write 3 of these ridiculous story problems with a red pen and 5 more on a macbook that I stole from the corner store how fast will I have to run in order to blog about it? What will the ratio of blog traffic to riot inciting be if it rains gumdrops in London for 17 minutes next friday?
Funny idea! You should see my head spin on some of the word problems that my kids have for homework. I look forward to playing along!
Hilarious! I'm looking forward to some wacky unsolvable problems!
I loved math word problems back in the day. Looking forward to see what Friday brings!
I used to hate those math puzzles that would have like 20 steps and then the 21st step was "disregard all other steps except for the first one". Too tricky!
lol, I so get caught up in the details too. Seriously I had to think about this and read it twice. I know, sad, lol