
Peter A. answered 10/05/14
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Peter's Math, History, and English Tutoring
Word problems are super tricky. Not only does it take math skills but also reading comprehension skills. Here's what I would do:
1). Highlight 'math words' in the sentence.
A man was cutting a 20 foot tree into 2 pieces. One piece was 4 feet longer than the other. How long are the two pieces?
2.) Read each sentence a few times to make sure you know what its saying.
The first sentence says, "A man was cutting a 20 foot tree into 2 pieces". From first glance, I thought he was cutting it in half, so he'd have two 10 ft pieces, but that's not the case.
The second sentence says, "One piece was 4 feet longer than the other", so this means we need two pieces with one 4 feet longer than the other.
3.) Put the problem into an equation. Create variables from the word problem.
So now we know we need two things: a size for the first piece and a size for the second piece. Let's make x the first piece and y the second longer piece. Now our equation should look like this:
x + y=20
We can't solve for y yet, but we can solve for x. Remember how much longer y is than x? [One piece was 4 feet longer than the other]. So we can substitute (x+4) for y in the equation and it should look like this:
x + (x+4)=20
and when we do the equation it turns into:
2x + 4=20
- 4 -4
2x=16
x=8
So now that we have the x variable, it will be super easy to find y! Let's plug in x:
8 + y=20
-8 -8
y=12
4.) Now that we have both variables, write out the answer in word form in a complete sentence (optional).
The two pieces are 8 feet and 12 feet long.
Jennifer D.
10/05/14